Skip to main content
Landscaping in Barking & Dagenham

The Becontree garden,
reimagined.

Much of this borough is the Becontree Estate — built in the 1920s to a deliberate plan in which every house got a real garden. Those gardens are now a century old.

Building in Barking & Dagenham

What we work with here

01

The largest estate of its kind, and the gardens it was built around

Becontree was laid out between the wars as the biggest public housing estate ever built, and generous gardens were part of the point: cottage-style houses on regular plots, each with a long rear garden intended for growing food. The consequence today is unusual consistency — street after street of similar houses on similar plots, most with a side path, a rectangular rear garden of good length, and a frontage that can take a car. Barking town centre and the riverside add newer flatted development with balconies and shared space, but the estate sets the character of the borough.

02

Clay, a century of settlement, and original surfaces

The ground is London Clay, with alluvial deposits towards the Thames. What we most often find in these gardens is not a failed modern build but the original concrete path and slab terrace laid decades ago straight onto the soil, with no sub-base and no deliberate fall — by now settled unevenly, and frequently running water back towards the house. The rebuild is the same discipline as everywhere on clay: dig out, get to a firm formation, compact a proper sub-base in layers, and set the fall away from the building with somewhere for the water to actually go.

03

Long plots, good access, and the freehold question

The practical advantages here are real. A side path on most houses means a mini digger can usually reach the rear, so groundwork gets dug to proper depth rather than barrowed by hand, and a long plot has room for a terrace, a lawn and an outbuilding without any of them crowding the others. The one thing worth checking early is tenure: where a property is still council-owned or leasehold, or sits under a right-to-buy agreement with covenants, permission for structural garden work and driveway crossovers may be needed from the landlord as well as the council.

Our services in Barking & Dagenham

What we build in Barking & Dagenham

Garden Design

Bespoke garden planning, planting schemes, and 3D visuals.

Learn more

Porcelain Paving

Modern, stain-resistant paving solutions for contemporary gardens.

Learn more

Natural Stone Driveways

Elegant Yorkstone, Limestone, and Sandstone installations.

Learn more

Decking & Seating

Custom composite or hardwood decking with built-in features.

Learn more

Retaining Walls & Fencing

Structural walls and privacy fencing for defined garden spaces.

Learn more

Jet Washing & Rejuvenation

Restore old patios and driveways to look brand new.

Learn more
Questions we get asked

Barking & Dagenham, specifically

What is the best layout for a long, narrow Becontree garden?
Divide it. A garden that is read from end to end in one glance always looks like a corridor. Two or three linked spaces — a terrace at the house, a lawn or planted middle, and something worth walking to at the far end such as a seating area or garden room — makes the plot feel wider and gives it more than one use. Moving the path off-centre so it crosses the garden rather than bisecting it reinforces the effect.
Do I need permission to make a driveway and drop the kerb?
The driveway itself generally needs no planning permission if it is permeable or drains within your boundary. The kerb, however, is highway: a vehicle crossover has to be applied for and constructed under the council's highways process, at your cost, and it is a separate matter from the driveway. If the property is leasehold or still has a council landlord, the landlord's consent may be needed too. We flag all three at survey.
Our old concrete path slopes towards the house. Can that be corrected?
Yes, and it should be. Original surfaces of this age were commonly laid straight onto the soil with no sub-base and no set fall, so a century of settlement leaves them running water back at the wall — which is a damp problem, not just an inconvenience. Correcting it means taking the old surface out, digging to a firm formation, building a compacted sub-base and laying the new surface to a deliberate fall away from the house with drainage at the threshold.
Coverage

Areas we cover in Barking & Dagenham

  • Barking
  • Dagenham
  • Becontree
  • Chadwell Heath
  • Rush Green
  • Marks Gate

Postcode districts: IG11 · RM8 · RM9 · RM10

All 32 London boroughs

Get a free quote in Barking & Dagenham.

Tell us about the site and we will arrange a survey. Written, no-obligation quotes for anywhere in Barking & Dagenham.

WhatsApp Us