More and more people are turning to paving as their favoured surface covering for their outdoor spaces as it is ideal if you want to use your garden as a socializing area to host barbecues and outdoor parties while also not wanting to have to regularly mow a grass lawn. Paving is a great low maintenance solution in this respect and with the tasteful, characteristic options that Bradstone paving offer, a garden which is predominantly paved no longer needs to be ugly and plain. However, with something that is quite repetitive like paving, it can be hard to achieve that finished look in a garden that you might get by employing a good architect for a house, especially seeing as gardens are something people tend to design and work on themselves as amateurs. The key to a garden with the wow factor is incorporating finishing touches and essentially accessorizing your paving with borders and other features.

Block paving is now almost universally used on driveways and because of this has begun to be seen as decidedly mundane. After all, it wasn’t really intended to be beautiful, just to bear the weight of a car without breaking but it is definitely possible to achieve a great looking block paved driveway. First off, its worth noting that Bradstone block paving is available in an array of styles from the plain brindle blocks used in town centres to the premium Woburn rumbled block paving by Bradstone. This has a slightly weathered and rough appearance and the mixed sizes that the blocks come in also help you to get away from the tiresome herringbone pattern that has become so common. An easy to achieve finishing touch you can give your block paved driveway is to implement a perimeter border with blocks of a different colour to those used in the centre which acts as a focal point drawing attention away from the expansive and generally plain appearance of the bulk of the paving. Laying kerb stones around the outer edge is also a great idea as they come in complimentary colours and styles while also helping to keep nearby plants, soil and gravel at bay as they are around 10cm higher than the paving.

Standard patio paving slabs have come a long way since those dull, grey concrete slabs of old that bore a somewhat industrial persona. Just take a quick look through the Bradstone paving UK range and you’ll see a vast selection of both manufactured and natural stone paving in a wide array of finishes and colours. Collections like Old Town, Ancestry Abbey and Bamburgh Mill have a distinctly traditional style with a weathered riven appearance while StoneFlair Panache and natural granite have a really modern and minimalist appearance. The great thing is that these are often sold as mixed patio packs with a variety of dimensions in one package which makes it easy to make your patio more unique. However adding features and little extras still help to create those finishing touches with paving slabs. Something you might want to look into are setts which are essentially individual cobble stones that can be arranged to create borders or dividing lines which are useful to allocate certain areas of the patio to different objects such as barbecues or recliners. Another great way to break up large paved areas is to leave out certain slabs and to infill the gap with soil for plants. Raised beds are also coming into fashion with people hoping to grow more vegetables in their gardens and log sleepers can be really useful for creating these.

As with anything, the key to creating a perfected paved area in your garden is by incorporating finishing touches and essentially accessorising your Bradstone paving with edging, borders and other features that can act as focal points. Borders can be essential to create crisp, distinctive lines between what is paved and what isn’t paved giving your garden a sense of perfection. This needn’t be expensive either as adding a border of a different coloured paving won’t necessarily be more expensive as these border stones will still fill in the same surface area. Also as is the case with removing Bradstone paving slabs to add plants, adding natural features such as plants to your paving could actually be cheaper.