Landscaping Company in Braintree

Braintree sits on heavy mid-Essex clay. It’s excellent ground once you work with it, and a problem if you don’t.

Three things follow from that, and they shape every job we quote here:

Winter waterlogging. Clay holds water. Gardens around Bocking, Rayne and the lower ground near the Brain and Pant valleys sit wet from November through March. A patio laid on a shallow sub-base will lift, rock and stain within two winters. We dig deeper — typically 150mm of compacted MOT Type 1 under paving rather than the 75–100mm you’ll see quoted cheaper — and we build in falls and drainage runs that take water somewhere sensible rather than into your foundations.

Shrink-swell movement. Essex clay expands when wet and shrinks in a dry summer. That’s why you see cracked pointing and dropped slabs on gardens that were laid perfectly level three years ago. Full mortar beds, movement-tolerant jointing compounds and proper edge restraint make the difference between a patio that lasts two years and one that lasts twenty.

Poor topsoil for planting. New-build gardens around Great Notley and the newer Braintree estates are often handed over with a thin skim of topsoil over compacted subsoil and buried builders’ rubble. Planting straight into that is why so many new-build lawns fail in the first summer. We break up the pan, import decent screened topsoil and amend with organic matter before anything goes in the ground.

If a quote you’ve had doesn’t mention drainage or sub-base depth, it’s worth asking why.