So a client of ours asks what we can do to promote the sale of railway sleepers. Naturally my curiosity is piqued - "As in what you put railway tracks on?" asked a rather niave and puzzled looking me. "Erm yes, as opposed to what other kind?". OK, fair come back I thought but the question still remained unanswered. How the heck and who on earth would buy railway sleepers?
Enter John Lessels Landscaping, my friend Andrew, and probably the rest of christendom, apparently it's not uncommon for treated and untreated railway sleepers to be reused/recycled into chique new garden design. Popping round to my pal Andrew's garden and he points out that his monster lawn is fringed with trimmed down railway sleepers which had been placed upright, like mini- Easter Island men between his patio and his lawn, quite a cool way of clearly demarking the start and end of the patio, but in his case because they dug the patio out a little way and this resulted in an 18" difference in height. It transpired that his landscaper new an Railway Sleepers seller in Edinburgh which turned out to be a couple of hundred poind cheaper that a reinforced dwarf wall which would need to have foundations, supporting brickwork etc to make it hold back even a tiny eighteen inches of lawn (apparently it gets quite mobile when very wet - every day's a school day huh?)
John Lessels, a leading landscaping and garden maintenance company in Midlothian also employ railway sleepers which they use to great effect for making raised beds for people in nursing homes and people with disabilities who can't get down to ground level too well. They thought, if they can't reach the ground, let's bring it up! So with some cheap railway sleepers, they have created a number of raised beds and even a fish pool using railway sleepers as the structural decoration and support for both beds and pond.
So there you have it, my lesson learned, railway sleepers, treated and untreated are particularly good for landscaping and contemporary garden design and layout as they can be shaped and trimmed to not only provide the muscle needed to support any beds or hold back lawns, but also to look really quite nice!
