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Front Garden Rebuild, Sleepers & Hoggin — Morningside
A Morningside front garden, and the first job Franc Landscapes ever did. A former client from Kevin's employed days rang him directly to come and look at the front yard — the last unfinished piece of a property he had already worked on years earlier, for someone else. Four weeks, January 2025.
What was there before
A low, uneven grass area that flooded often. A broken and uneven concrete entrance patio. Garden beds that had grown well past the point of being tidied. The back garden and the front hedge had been done years earlier, so the front was the piece nobody had ever got to — and it was the piece every visitor walked across first, and the only part visible from the street.
What we proposed
Raise the wet ground rather than fight it, and give the entrance a proper front door. Railway sleepers do both jobs at once: they redefine the entrance path, the garden beds and the hedge edging in one material, and because they hold a level they let us lift the old lawn and turn it into a solid courtyard rather than grass that never dries out.
What made it hard
Water, levels and everything already standing there. The excess water had to go somewhere, the new heights had to meet the house and the existing structures without a step or a lip, and the pedestrian gate had to come back. We reinstated it on a new post in a raised position, and the gate itself, a classic colonial one, was stripped, sanded and repainted rather than replaced.
What we built
The courtyard is compacted hoggin over a compacted GAP20 base, a naturally draining surface. The entrance is 600 × 600 concrete pavers on a mortar base over compacted GAP20, surrounded by river pebbles and framed in railway sleepers. Every sleeper is fixed to concreted piles with galvanised coach screws.
The old concrete patio stayed. We secured its edge with a reinforced concrete border and D12 steel, resurfaced it with a dry sand and cement mix, and tiled over the top. The beds were replanted throughout in premium lawn soil and finished in cambium mulch, with a new star jasmine garden along the patio. Sleepers, pavers, soil, mulch, pebbles, hoggin and GAP20 all came from Central Landscape Supplies.
GAP20 is graded aggregate, General All Passing a 20 mm screen, and it compacts to a base that carries a surface without shifting under it. Hoggin over the top of it stays permeable, so the courtyard takes water down through itself instead of pushing it at the house or the neighbours. That is the whole answer to a lawn that used to flood: not a drain, a surface that drinks.
Who did what
Everything here was ours, with no other trades on site. Central Landscape Supplies came into the picture afterwards: they approached us about filming a video collaboration, and this is the job we chose to take them to. The interview and the article that came out of it are theirs, and they own that footage.
What made it hard
Water, levels and everything already standing there. The excess water had to go somewhere, the new heights had to meet the house and the existing structures without a step or a lip, and the pedestrian gate had to come back. We reinstated it on a new post in a raised position, and the gate itself, a classic colonial one, was stripped, sanded and repainted rather than replaced.
What we built
The courtyard is compacted hoggin over a compacted GAP20 base, a naturally draining surface. The entrance is 600 × 600 concrete pavers on a mortar base over compacted GAP20, surrounded by river pebbles and framed in railway sleepers. Every sleeper is fixed to concreted piles with galvanised coach screws.
The old concrete patio stayed. We secured its edge with a reinforced concrete border and D12 steel, resurfaced it with a dry sand and cement mix, and tiled over the top. The beds were replanted throughout in premium lawn soil and finished in cambium mulch, with a new star jasmine garden along the patio. Sleepers, pavers, soil, mulch, pebbles, hoggin and GAP20 all came from Central Landscape Supplies.
GAP20 is graded aggregate, General All Passing a 20 mm screen, and it compacts to a base that carries a surface without shifting under it. Hoggin over the top of it stays permeable, so the courtyard takes water down through itself instead of pushing it at the house or the neighbours. That is the whole answer to a lawn that used to flood: not a drain, a surface that drinks.
Who did what
Everything here was ours, with no other trades on site. Central Landscape Supplies came into the picture afterwards: they approached us about filming a video collaboration, and this is the job we chose to take them to. The interview and the article that came out of it are theirs, and they own that footage.
Why it cost what it cost
Most of what this job cost is buried. Compacted GAP under the hoggin, a mortar base under the pavers, a reinforced border and D12 steel holding the old patio together, concreted piles under every sleeper. None of it shows in a photograph and all of it decides whether the surface is still flat and still draining in ten years. The rest went on the heights and falls, and on making new work meet a house and structures already there.
What the client said
Kevin and his wonderful team completed a landscaping renovation of our front yard in January 2025. From start to finish, they were consummate professionals, accommodating to our needs, providing practical advice and solutions, and keeping up excellent communication throughout the project. The standard of workmanship was 5 star, and the job was completed on time and in budget. Highly recommended to anyone thinking of a landscaping transformation.
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Central Landscape Supplies, March 2026