​Taken from the article written by Andrea Ball published in the July 2026 Edition

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How to find the right artist or supplier, work effectively with them, and select and use sustainable materials and working practices to bring your design to life

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Talking to craftspeople, suppliers and landscape teams early on in the process about materials, specification, and different construction techniques can open up additional design opportunities, and, ultimately, reduce costs.

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“A wall can be built “dry”, alleviating the need for foundations or use of cement’, explains Paul Cheetham of Gecko Stonework, ‘allowing moisture to pass through, providing planting opportunities within the crevasses and an amazing habitat for wildlife’.

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Paul often creates a mood board of stonework that the client finds appealing and builds sample panels to help the designer and the client visualise the finished effect.  ‘Based on the geology, many areas have a particular stone, method of construction or indeed, laying style’. He explains. ‘Within a twenty-mile radius of my home we have flint (chalk flint, field flint, cobbles), ironstone, soft chalky limestones such as “clunch” and bargate stone, to name a few.  Even when the client has chosen a stone type, they will often be drawn to a particular laying style, some prefer dry laid stone, other mortared’.

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‘Trying to source a local stone will help to keep things more sustainable, as will using reclaimed stone.  Stone is one of the very few materials that can be used over and over again, and damaged dry stone walls can be rebuilt relatively easily.  A few years ago, I rebuilt a collapsed ironstone wall.  It was more than a hundred years old and had been pushed over by same unwisely planted rhododendrons.  Every piece of stone was salvaged.  The old mortar was crushed and mixed with fresh lime and a little more sand to make the bedding mortar.  The lime concrete from the old foundations was made into a lime-rich concrete for the new foundations and the wall will be good for many decades to come’.

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One of the biggest budget enemies is poor quality stone.  It’s always worth asking for advice from those who have worked with stone day in and day out for many years. It will save you time and money in the long run.

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Keeping a clean working area and arranging the stone in sizes and within reach makes the process safer, less demanding on the body and more productive.

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In my eyes stone is timeless.  We are often working with materials in excess of a hundred and forty  million years old and we owe it to those materials to make the finished project as beautiful and as long lasting as possible.

 

Paul Cheetham from Gecko Stonework created several bespoke pieces for Max Parker-Smith’s Moments of Reflection garden at RHS Chelsea 2025, including a ‘squeeze stile’ created from a single piece of stone split using a technique that can be traced back to the ancient Egyptians.

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A stone wall, built correctly, will outlast a wall made of brick or cladding many times over and will gain beauty as it ages.