Choosing Paving and Natural Stone for a Sussex Garden

Paving is the biggest visual decision in a garden and the one most often made from a 100mm sample in a showroom. Wet it, put it next to the house brick, and look at it in the shade before you commit to sixty square metres of it.

The main options

Sandstone

Warm, forgiving, widely used and sympathetic to Sussex brick and flint. Riven sandstone has character; sawn and honed sandstone reads more contemporary. It is porous, so it will weather and needs sealing in shaded, damp positions.

Limestone

Denser than sandstone, with a fine even surface and cooler grey and blue tones. Excellent with painted render and modern glazing. Avoid the softer, chalkier grades under trees.

Granite

The workhorse. Extremely hard, excellent grip, resists staining, and setts are unbeatable for driveways and edging. Colour range is narrower and the material is harder to cut on site.

Porcelain

Non-porous, colour-stable, low maintenance and consistently sized - genuinely excellent for shaded terraces and around water. It must be laid on a full bed with a slurry primer; when porcelain fails it is almost always the bedding, not the tile.

Sussex-specific advice

• Shade and damp mean algae - choose a textured finish and specify falls that actually shed water.
• Match the undertone of the house, not the colour. Cool grey stone against warm red brick is the most common mismatch.
• Wealden clay moves. Sub-base depth and drainage matter more here than the stone on top.
• Buy from one batch and mix pallets while laying to avoid banding.

Jointing, edges and the invisible half

A brush-in resin joint on a correctly laid full mortar bed will outlast the fashion for the stone above it. Edge details - a sawn kerb, a brick soldier course, a flush lawn edge - are what makes a terrace look designed rather than delivered.