GroundGuard by ACO Water Management was installed by Bradfield & Davies to secure gravel and provide a neat outdoor garden area, easily navigable by a wheelbarrow for an attractive vegetable garden in the Pangbourne region.

The ‘grow your own veg’ trend has heightened in the last few years and with it, back gardens up and down the country have been transformed into flourishing vegetable patches.

The homeowners at Upper Bowen Farm, had invested a significant amount in the new design and development of a 15m x 12m vegetable garden to improve its landscape area.

The customer wanted to create an aesthetically pleasing outdoor area finished with decorative aggregate walkways, to enable them to tend to the growing vegetables with ease.

Crucially the walkways had to be suitable for wheelbarrow use, to allow the customer to transport planting equipment throughout the garden.

A key consideration for Bradfield & Davies was combining the decorative aggregate and the use of a wheelbarrow. Given materials like gravel can be easily displaced, it was important to explore solutions that would ensure the aggregate would be left undisturbed.

Providing adequate drainage is another important factor when it comes to garden renovations. Replacing grass garden areas with non-permeable surfaces can increase the risk of flooding.

Permeable surfaces are used to help slow down the drainage and allow rain to slowly soak through to the substrate below. As such it is best to combine materials, such as gravel, with a reinforced structure.

A secondary advantage of systems like this, is that it holds the gravel in place so it doesn’t escape into the surrounding areas.

ACO’s award winning GroundGuard was selected by the contractor and provided the perfect solution. GroundGuard is a lightweight ground reinforcement system which acts as a stabilisation tile, holding the gravel in place whilst also allowing the wheelbarrow to navigate the area with ease.

Bradfield & Davies used 180m2 covering an area of 15m x 12m. This type of surface helps to reduce the displacement of the decorative finish. It is also over 90 percent porous, improving the rate of surface water run-off.

The GroundGuard tiles could be easily cut to shape for irregular edging, simplifying the process for Bradfield & Davies when shaping each individual walkway around a raised bed. The interlocking clip fixings helped the landscapers to quickly install the solution in the specified times outlined from the outset of the brief.