Timber Decking and Steps

Timber is ideal for many projects in the garden, and is particularly useful for decking and steps. Like a stone patio adjacent to a stone house, a wooden deck adjoining a timber building will make a strong link between inside and outside. Timber can be easily worked to shapes that would be extremely difficult to produce using paving. It is light, it warms up quickly and it needs little maintenance apart from a regular application of non-toxic preservative. Never use creosote, which is certain death to plants. Some wood can even be bought already pressure-treated with preservative, further reducing after-care. Remember, though, that timber means trees, and if those trees come from a non-managed source then you are contributing to the degradation of our environment. Please check with your supplier, particularly if you envisage using hardwood species from tropical rain forests.

The sturdy and heavy bulk of railway sleepers makes them ideal for paving, raised beds and retaining walls. Try and select your sleepers before you buy, as they may be soaked with oil or tar which will cause you problems in hot weather. Because of their weight, it really is a two-man job to lift them, but they are solid enough to be bedded on a minimal foundation of sifted soil over well-compacted ground or they can be laid in a staggered bond like brickwork. Raised beds are fast to build, and again the sleepers can be laid like bricks, their weight allowing them to be laid dry. However, if you are constructing a retaining wall, or a raised bed that is more than three sleepers high, the timbers should be drilled to accept vertical steel rods that are then bedded into a concrete foundation to ensure stability.

If your garden includes a change in level, sleepers can make excellent steps. Rather than making a straight flight, you might prefer a staggered pattern with planting encroaching on either side. Steps can also be built from logs, securely pegged into the slope. In a steep flight they should be bedded close together, but with a more gentle gradient the treads can be floored with chipped bark.Raised beds or retaining walls can be built from sawn logs arranged vertically to follow any line, straight or curved. Assuming the logs will rise about 600mm (24in) above ground, you should bury them 3oomm (12in) below ground for stability, first soaking them thoroughly in a nontoxic preservative.

Large logs can be sliced up into discs about i5cm (6in) thick and used as stepping stones. More unusually, they could even be made to form a kind of patio. If they become slippery, chicken wire nailed over each slice will solve the problem and be virtually invisible

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