Building our decking and pergola

Our garden is roughly 10m x 10m and that includes the space where the garage sits. It also drops by 1m from the house to the bottom of the garden so we have quite a bit of a slope.

This space behind the garage was always a bit of a weird space but we soon realised it was a total sun trap and got the very last of the sunshine on an evening up to about 8pm.

We bought 27 x 4.8m decking planks from our local building supplier (Farmac if you're in Leeds!) and set to work in 26c heat over a bank holiday weekend back in May 2018. The cost of the materials was around £550 - we also needed postcrete, decking screws and timber planks for the frame. We also had some pretty solid timber fence posts already so saved a bit of money on these. For the plastic base (to stop plants growing through) we just used a large blue plastic sheet which cost about £4!

We added the metal gazebo from Very which was reduced to around £200 at the time. If you’re planning to buy one I’d try to order it outside of the summer months as they often seem to be out of stock or have long lead times. The cover retracts by pulling a cord which is excellent for when you want sun or when you want shade etc. It measures 3m x 3m which fitted almost perfectly in the space we had. It took about an hour to put together and you definitely need two people!

We opted for a decking stain from Screw Fix in Slate (just their basic range) and added extra fence panels to give us extra privacy. The fence is stained in Ronseal and the colour was also called Slate but it’s much lighter than the decking and provides a great contrast.

Our ‘Haversham’ garden furniture is from Asda and also comes in grey - the range compromises of different seating arrangements and we’ve since bought the dining set too for the patio. It’s ridiculously comfortable and my sister and a few friends have bought the same set after remarking on how comfortable ours is.

My top tip for a new build garden is to befriend any gardeners in the family. My mother in law gave us some amazing bamboo plants that would have cost a fortune in the shops! Always put bamboo in a pot and not in the ground as it spreads rapidly and is quite hard to get out! Anyway, it sits perfectly on our decking and breaks up the grey a little bit!