Before & After: Corstorphine Front Garden, Walling & Paving

A front garden refreshed, not replaced

This Corstorphine front garden already had plenty of character: a traditional stone house, a mature tree, established shrubs and red gravel beds. The transformation focused on the hard landscaping around those features, rather than turning the garden into something unrecognisable. New walling and a clearly defined paved entrance give the frontage a more coordinated finish while keeping the planting and gravel central to its appearance.

The finished combination is Tobermore Garden Stone Heather walling, Buff paving and Heather kerbstone. The warm paving provides a lighter route through the garden, while the darker edging and varied wall tones sit comfortably beside the stone frontage. It is a useful example of how a focused change to paths and boundaries can refresh an established Edinburgh garden without replacing every element.

Before: weathered walling and an ageing concrete path

The before photographs show a low rendered boundary wall with visible weathering, pale repair patches and discolouration along the street-facing surface. Its coping and the adjoining pavement frame the entrance, but the wall does not have the same visual consistency as the house behind it. A black metal gate marks the opening into the garden.

Inside the boundary, the original concrete entrance path runs between planted beds towards the front door. Close-up photographs show surface wear and a visible crack across the path. Lavender, flowering shrubs and low evergreen planting soften the edges, with red gravel covering much of the surrounding ground. Those existing features are important to the before-and-after story: this was an established garden needing a refreshed entrance and boundary, not an empty site needing a completely new layout.

After: Tobermore Garden Stone Heather walling

The completed street views show the refreshed boundary in Tobermore Garden Stone Heather. Its textured faces and mix of heather-toned colours create a more distinctive frontage, finished with light-coloured coping along the top and at the end piers. The new appearance gives the entrance a clearer frame and brings more depth to the boundary than the original rendered surface.

The photographs taken from inside the garden show the wall in relation to the central path and existing beds. This helps explain the design as a whole: the wall is not an isolated feature, but part of the view from the front door towards the street. Its warmer tones work alongside the red gravel and the darker borders to the paving, while the retained greenery keeps the frontage from feeling dominated by masonry.

Buff paving with Heather kerbstone

The new Buff paving replaces the old central concrete path with a lighter, more clearly defined approach to the house. Heather kerbstone creates a contrasting border on both sides, separating the paving from the gravel and planting. From the gate opening, the path leads directly towards the entrance; photographs near the house also show how the paving turns around the front-door area.

The close-up finished views are especially useful here. They show the relationship between the paving colour, the Heather edging, the small level change near the entrance and the surrounding beds. The contrast is deliberate but restrained: the Buff surface is the main visual route, and the edging outlines it without competing with the house. The public pavement outside the garden remains separate from the work and is not presented as newly paved.

Keeping the garden’s existing character

A mature tree, flowering shrubs, low evergreens and red gravel remain visible in the finished photographs. Keeping those established elements gives the completed work an immediate sense of belonging. The improvement comes from the new boundary and entrance surfaces, with the garden’s planting still providing colour, texture and a softer setting for the stone house.

The wider after views also show the side access, which remains visually distinct from the new central entrance paving. Together, the photographs tell a clear before-and-after story: a weathered frontage and ageing concrete approach have become a coordinated combination of Heather walling, Buff paving and Heather kerbstone. For homeowners considering a similar project in Corstorphine, the key lesson is that the right materials and a focused layout can make a substantial visual difference while respecting what is already there.

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