Monthly Design Tips & Trends with Brock Taylor Estate Agents

To celebrate our new partnership with Brock Taylor estate agents we will be sharing tips and trends in the garden and sharing latest projects updates to inspire your outdoor spaces.            

Brock Taylor are a friendly, independent estate and letting agent, with offices in both Horsham and Haywards Heath in Sussex.

Their experienced team provide advice and direction on a wide range of property-related matters, including buying or selling, either for investment or finding your perfect home.

Brock Taylor champions honesty, success and outstanding customer service, tied together with traditional family values, and a little bit of fun!

Under the management of Directors, Peter and Lucy Maskell, who between them have more than 50 years of estate & letting agency experience, the company has grown to be the market leaders, consistently out-selling its competitors.

This has helped Brock Taylor receive more than 30 industry awards since 2010, including being voted the best agent in West Sussex, by The UK Property Awards, for 10 consecutive years and the UK’s best single office estate agency by The Negotiator Magazine.

Recently, Brock Taylor has started partnering with local businesses in Sussex that support and highlight some amazing services that can help bring a unique touches to your property whilst also adding value.

Their latest collaboration is with multi-award-winning Conquest Creative Spaces who recently won a gold award at Chelsea Flower Show.

The collaboration, which will be rolling out on social media in the coming weeks, will provide tips, advice and guidance on current landscaping trends to provide you with some brilliant inspiration.                         

 

Garden Features- Our Top 3 Trends 2022

Green Walls

Green Oasis on your Boundaries

Green Walls provide a vertical treat and work particularly well in compact gardens where space is limited as you can see below, providing a much needed green oasis!

We have been successful in implementing green wall features into Garden Boundaries in recent years showing not just softened backdrops but focal point draws as well.

Boundaries are always underestimated in peoples gardens, they do not just provide privacy but a fantastic chance to create something extra special in your space.

Outdoor Kitchens

King of the Grill! Canopies & Kitchens

Whether its a simplified place setting for your barbeque to sit in or a full spec kitchen bar set up we haven’t designed one scheme in the last two years without one.

More and more people especially over covid times have realised how much time they spend outdoors cooking, entertaining or relaxing so kitchens, bars and canopies come hand in hand.

We always recommend a canopy of some form whether its louvered aluminium or timber to provide shade in any south facing sun and also so you can enjoy a beer in the dry, if it is drizzling outside. So many of our clients find their outdoor kitchens have completely changed the way they use their garden all year round come rain, shine or even night time.

Success is in its use!

Fire Pit Areas

Fire table, Ember bowls and Sunken Footwells

We love a fire pit especially Sunken! 

Creating a sunken area in the garden adds to the intimacy of these glorious chill out spaces. These can double up for entertainment as well as enjoying those more private moments over a marshmallow or two, another must have for clients in recent years.

Gas or Charcoal normally sets the presidence to how you want to maintain this space. Contemporary surfaces better suit gas for easy cleaning, gravels for charcoal. 

Gas tables or bowls keep a clean heat vs charcoal or wood urns can be more messy and better suited to the end of the garden. 

Stay tuned for next months tops tips and trends!

Garden SOS - Dame Vera Lynn Support Garden

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We did it!! In just 6 days with a little help from our friends just in time for Christmas 2020. Quote from Dad Richard; ‘’When your told roughly how long you do have with someone time becomes a really important commodity and you want to make every moment count.’’

COVID Update 07/01/21

As we work outside social distancing can be easily maintained if we can follow the requests below.

* As much as we appreciate the offer of refreshments we will not be accepting any during this time and will supply our own
* We will be practising distancing and will maintain the recommended distance from our clients
* With all due respect we will not be shaking hands or making contact during meetings
* Our team will continue to maintain our high standards of hygiene with handwash and sanitiser supplied to them, which is always available in our vehicles as a matter of course, and carry out regular cleaning of vehicles, machinery and tools
* Our team will not require access to the house unless absolutely necessary
* Any meetings must be conducted at distance
* If any of our clients have underlying health conditions or are aged 70 or over please notify us so that we can take all necessary precautions to protect you
* Unless necessary, please try to communicate with our staff from a distance or by telephone
But also if you find you need to self isolate, whilst we are on site, we will do our best to help in any way we can – collecting and delivering supplies, etc.
Business as usual
We are a small business employing some very experienced and well trained employees. We will continue as normal to enable our staff to work whilst taking the necessary precautions advised.
We plan to carry on working unless either Government Health Officials tell us differently or we feel the need to isolate ourselves.
We have plans in action to enable our office staff to work from home if necessary and if schools close are able to continue whilst supporting staff who may have to take time out for childcare.

Thank you for your cooperation,

The Conquest Team

Garden SOS - Dame Vera Lynn Support Garden

The Conquest Team and Co call in the landscape industry for Christmas Garden SOS!

We’re upholding the true meaning of Christmas this year, volunteering to embark on a special ‘DIY-SOS style’ project for a family in Haywards Heath.

We are delighted to reveal a very special project this Christmas we have designed for the Dame Vera Lynn Children’s Charity to build a surprise garden for the Taylor Johnson family, whose 5-year- old son Joshua has severe complex physical and neurological disabilities.

Currently, this challenging sloping garden provides an unsafe and difficult environment for Joshua and his family to use made even more difficult in his aided wheelchair.

The surprise will also help mark the Dame Vera Lynn Children’s Charity 20th Anniversary this month highlighting some of the amazing work the centre provides for families with disabled children.

Helping pull the landscape industry together has been key for this amazing special project with material donations coming far and wide and many local landscaping companies joining us to help build this garden in just 5 days!

Read More [Here]

Material Procurement - Supply Bottleneck

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The industry has finally started to bottleneck on supplies the last three weeks and we are really seeing a surge in bulk buying and clearing the remaining stock on the ground. 

This has started to cause delays on running projects and created time-consuming strains within the office finding ourselves fighting for pallets of cement and concrete blocks between merchants.

For some bizarre reason the popularity of grey sandstone has gone through the roof this season and it one of the most sought after products on the paving market. 

Plaster bags are the gold dust in the construction industry which retails at £6.50 a bag, we have heard rumours of people paying £85 a bag. This has caused lots of problems for trades becoming out of work now until new supplies come in.

The reality of the lockdown closing down production/manufacturing factories has really started to hit. Some still not open or only just. Until these workplaces play catch up, the stock situation, unfortunately, won’t improve. 

Testing times for sure and morally wrong to be profiting out the supply and demand during a global pandemic.

We are extremely thankful to our suppliers and stockists throughout the industry who have been working tirelessly to keep our supplies coming in and our prices fair inevitably keeping our business running.

Cheers Guys, you know who you are! 

We now accept Credit Cards!

Izettle-2

We now take credit card payments via the izettle paypal card reader or remotely via a new link button coming soon on our website. This is another way we are trying to improve our service even remotely. Using credit card payments for percentage transactions is another way we can offer payment protection Under Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act. Giving our clients peace of mind on large deposit payment transfers during uncertain times.

COVID-19 Update 20/03/2020

As we work outside social distancing can be easily maintained if we can follow the requests below.

* As much as we appreciate the offer of refreshments we will not be accepting any during this time and will supply our own
* We will be practising distancing and will maintain the recommended distance from our clients
* With all due respect we will not be shaking hands or making contact during meetings
* Our team will continue to maintain our high standards of hygiene with handwash and sanitiser supplied to them, which is always available in our vehicles as a matter of course, and carry out regular cleaning of vehicles, machinery and tools
* Our team will not require access to the house unless absolutely necessary
* Any meetings must be conducted at distance
* If any of our clients have underlying health conditions or are aged 70 or over please notify us so that we can take all necessary precautions to protect you
* Unless necessary, please try to communicate with our staff from a distance or by telephone
But also if you find you need to self isolate, whilst we are on site, we will do our best to help in any way we can – collecting and delivering supplies, etc.
Business as usual
We are a small business employing some very experienced and well trained employees. We will continue as normal to enable our staff to work whilst taking the necessary precautions advised.
We plan to carry on working unless either Government Health Officials tell us differently or we feel the need to isolate ourselves.
We have plans in action to enable our office staff to work from home if necessary and if schools close are able to continue whilst supporting staff who may have to take time out for childcare.

Thank you for your cooperation,

The Conquest Team

Lexi's Garden 17/12/2019 - 22/12/2019

On December 17th 2019 our team dusted their Christmas hats off and got out the mince pies to bring the greatest gift of all to a little girl named Lexi.

7 year old Elexia also known as Lexi experiences seizures and also has an unknown condition that presents with her being non-verbal. She cannot walk without aid. Their garden prior to the build consisted of mud, turf and rubble which meant she didn’t have a safe environment to play and explore. The team started their progress with help from public contractors including Paul Greenyer from InsideOut who helped with the build for the whole 3 and a half days. James Coleman from Sussex Landscapes and many more! The team worked long hours through all kinds of weather to get this garden done before the deadline.

The volunteers weren’t the only people who helped make this dream come real. We also got many sponsors including London Stone supplying the Porcelain Paving, Beacon Fencing supplied all the timber, Arbour Landscape Solutions donated the Rubber Bark Chippings, Garden Sage Supplying all the plants, BuryHill Landscape Supplies, Parkers Building Supplies, Everedge and MRL Grab and Tip.

Lexi-Garden-BeforeandAfter-min