Serving Portobello and Joppa
We are based on Duddingston Park South, which is roughly a five minute drive from Portobello High Street. Most of the landscaping work we do in Portobello and Joppa is within a mile and a half of our yard, and that proximity is genuinely useful when a job needs a material drop, a machine brought back, or a quick site visit before we can price something properly.
We have worked across Portobello for over thirty years, from the Victorian terraces running back from the Promenade, through the tenement stock around Bath Street and Bellfield Street, up to the interwar semis around Brunstane, Milton Road and Duddingston Village.
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Working the same streets for three decades means we have seen the same issues come up again and again here.
Properties within a few streets of the Promenade take a genuine battering. Timber fencing has a noticeably shorter life in Portobello than it does inland, and untreated softwood panels will not give you good service at all. We specify pressure-treated timber as a minimum, composite where the budget allows, and we set posts in concrete rather than relying on driven spikes that work loose in exposed positions.
A large proportion of Portobello properties are terraced or tenemented with no side access to the rear garden. Materials have to come through the house, over a wall, or occasionally through a neighbour’s property with permission. We have done a great many of these jobs and we price them honestly at quotation stage rather than discovering the problem on day two. Barrowing a driveway’s worth of Type 1 through a hallway with floor protection down is slow work, and an honest quote reflects that from the outset.
Gardens running back from the Prom often sit on ground that has been raised, filled or built up over the years. Laying a patio here without properly addressing the sub-base is how you end up with a surface holding standing water within two winters. On several Portobello jobs we have had to dig considerably deeper than a standard specification would suggest, and that is better found at survey than mid-job.
The older Portobello housing stock frequently has ground levels that have crept up over decades of successive patios and paths being laid on top of one another. Getting a new surface to sit the required distance below the DPC sometimes means excavating substantially more than the customer expects. We check this before quoting.
A lot of Portobello rear gardens are compact and overshadowed. Design decisions matter more when there is less space and less light. A well-laid monoblock or slabbed area with generous planting borders will almost always serve a small north-facing Portobello garden better than trying to force in a lawn that will never establish properly.
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Monoblocking makes up the largest share of what we do in Portobello, particularly front garden driveway conversions. The complete range is set out on our landscaping services page, and you can see finished work in our gallery.
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Being five minutes away is not a marketing line. It means we can get out to a Portobello site the same week for a quote rather than the following month. It means materials arrive when they are supposed to and a forgotten tool does not cost half a day. And it means that if something needs looking at six months after the job finished, we are not driving across the city to do it.
It also means we know the streets. We know which lanes a tipper can get down, which stretches need a permit, and which back greens have to be worked through the front door.
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Over thirty years trading in Edinburgh. Members of BNI. Approved installer for Tobermore. Rated 9.8 out of 10 on Checkatrade. A good deal of our Portobello work has come from neighbours watching a job in progress and asking for a card, which is the kind of referral we are happy to rely on.
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We provide free written quotations before anything starts, itemised, with no hidden costs, valid for 30 days. We do not take deposits. Part payment is only requested once the work is underway and materials are on site, with the balance due on completion. All work is fully guaranteed and we carry comprehensive public liability insurance, with proof available on request.
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