If you live in one of the Victorian terraces we see all over Battersea, Clapham, Tooting and Wandsworth, you’ll know the situation well. Your house joins next door on both sides, there’s no gate down the side, and the only way into the back garden runs through the front door, along the hallway and past the kitchen. Perfect for a cup of tea on the patio. A little more of a puzzle when you want that patio replaced.
People often get in touch assuming a lack of side access will make their garden project a nightmare. In our experience, it’s very doable. It just needs more planning and a fair bit more carrying than a garden with a driveway round the side.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through how these builds work, how we look after your house, and what it all means for timings and cost.
What Makes a No Side Access Garden Build Different?
If every bag of sand, every paving slab, every length of timber and every bit of waste has to pass through your house to reach the garden, you have a no side access build. Some people call it a through the house build, which sums it up nicely.
The finished garden can look exactly the same as one with a wide gate and a drive. The difference lies in how everything gets there. On an open site, a landscaper can bring a mini digger round the side, have a lorry drop gravel on the drive and wheel old soil straight out to a skip. Behind a terrace, all of that has to fit through your front door and round the tight turn at the bottom of the hall.
What Challenges Does a Through the House Build Bring?
The biggest change is that machinery can’t come in. A mini digger won’t fit through a domestic doorway, so the heavy work falls to people with spades, buckets and wheelbarrows.
Think about an old patio coming up. Someone breaks up the slabs, bags every piece of concrete and carries it out through your house. Then they dig out the old base and carry that out too. After that, the new hardcore, sand and cement come in the same way, one bag at a time. A small digger would clear the ground in a morning. Here, it takes a few days of steady work. If you need a garden clearance first, the same goes for every old shed panel and overgrown shrub.
Two people can’t easily pass each other in a Victorian hallway with a load each, so these jobs take longer than the same design with a side gate, and that extra time shows up in the price. Our guide on how long a garden transformation takes gives you a feel for timings more generally.
How Do You Protect Your House During the Build?
This is the part most people worry about, and understandably so. You’ll have a team walking through your home many times a day carrying heavy, dirty materials.
Before anything arrives, the whole route from the front door to the garden needs covering. Carpets get heavy-duty plastic sheeting. Wooden floors and tiles need something rigid on top, such as coreboard or runner boards. If someone drops a bag or a few stones get trodden in, the board takes the knock instead of your original floorboards.
It’s surprisingly easy to clip a door frame with a wheelbarrow handle, especially at the corner where the hall meets the kitchen. Wall sheeting and low tack protective film cover the paintwork, and foam corner guards soften the edges of door frames. The low tack film peels away cleanly at the end without lifting your paint.
Dust is the one people underestimate. Cutting stone, mixing mortar and tipping out aggregate send fine particles drifting into rooms nobody has set foot in. Zip up plastic dust doors seal off the living room, the staircase or any other space away from the route, while still letting you get through yourself. It’s also worth asking your contractor to do any cutting outdoors, well away from the back door.
In most terraces, the route runs straight through the kitchen, so clear the worktops and move anything fragile before work begins. When we visit, we’ll walk the route with you and talk through which rooms we’ll pass through.
How Do Materials, Deliveries and Waste Get In and Out?
Little and often is the general rule.
On a typical site, a builders’ merchant might lift a one tonne bulk bag of sand onto the drive with a crane arm. Behind a terrace, there’s no drive, and nobody can carry a tonne bag. Instead, materials arrive in smaller loads, such as individual 25kg bags of aggregate that one person can carry along a protected hallway. It costs a little more per tonne, but it keeps the work moving and stops your pavement turning into a builders’ yard.
Waste makes the reverse journey. Old soil, rubble, turf and packaging go into rubble sacks or buckets and out to a skip or van at the front. Skips on London streets often need a council permit, and many of the roads we work on have little space for one. A wait and load van can solve that. It parks up for a set time, the team loads it from the front door, and it leaves full. We’re a registered waste carrier with the Environment Agency, so we handle green waste removal ourselves, and we recycle and upcycle as much as we can.
Size catches people out even more than weight. Every timber frame, sheet of OSB, piece of plasterboard and structural beam has to fit through your front door, along the hall, round any corners and under the ceiling height at every point. A good contractor measures the whole route at the first visit and plans every large component around the tightest spot.
The order of work matters too. The old garden needs to come out before new materials go in, because carrying rubble past a stack of fresh porcelain invites chips. Deliveries work best when they arrive close to when they’re needed, so you’re not stepping round pallets in the hall for a fortnight.
Which Materials and Methods Suit Restricted Access?
You don’t need to scale back your plans, but a few sensible choices can reduce the amount of carrying. It’s worth thinking about this at the garden design stage.
Pre fabrication helps a great deal. Pergolas, garden offices and other timber structures can be cut and partly assembled off site, then brought in as pieces sized to fit your hallway. That means less sawing on your doorstep, less dust in the house and fewer noisy days for your neighbours. If a garden office is on your wish list, our guide to garden rooms and how to get one is a good place to start, and you can see a garden room we built in Battersea for inspiration.
Foundations are another area to consider. A traditional concrete base can mean dozens of bags of cement, sand and ballast, all carried through and mixed on site. Ground screws, structural timber bases and modular composite framing can support decks, pergolas and garden buildings with a fraction of that material. Ground screws go in with hand held equipment, so nothing heavy needs to come through the house. Your contractor will want to check your soil before recommending one, as each suits different ground.
Large natural stone slabs and heavy brick weigh a lot and can crack if they catch a door frame on the way through. Composite decking, porcelain tiles and smaller paving blocks are lighter per piece and easier to carry. Porcelain also gives a small London garden a clean, modern finish. Take a look at our paving and patio installation page, or our ideas for hard landscaping in small London gardens.
What Working Practices Should You Expect From Your Contractor?
A good team will treat your home with the same care they’d want shown in their own.
Ask how they leave things at the end of each day. Many experienced teams set aside around half an hour before they finish to vacuum the protected route and sweep up, so you can come home to a hallway you’re happy to walk down.
A two shoe system keeps outdoor boots in the garden and on the protected route, with clean shoes or overshoes for any trip into another part of the house. It’s the difference between a tidy landing and muddy footprints up the stairs.
Sharp blades, metal edging and anything like fuel or sealant should come through in enclosed, hard shelled cases, protecting your walls, floors and anyone passing in the hall. A contractor with experience of these jobs will have a ready answer if you ask about it.
Let your contractor know about your household routine as well. If you work from home, have a little one who naps after lunch or a neighbour on night shifts, mention it early. Noisier jobs can often be planned around the quieter parts of your day.
How Do You Choose the Right Contractor?
Look for a landscaper with plenty of experience of terraced houses, then ask them to explain exactly how they’d get everything in and out of your home.
The first visit tells you a lot. Someone who knows what they’re doing will walk from your front door to the garden, measure the doorways and ask where a van or skip could go. They’ll raise protection, deliveries and waste without prompting. If someone prices your garden after a quick look out of the back window, it’s worth being cautious. They may not have allowed for the access, and that’s how unexpected costs appear halfway through.
Ask to see photos of similar jobs. You can browse our projects to see the kind of spaces we work on, and our reviews page shows what clients have said about having us in their homes.
Make sure the quote includes the extra handling, protection and waste removal from the start, broken down so you can see what each part covers.
How Much Does a Garden Build Without Side Access Cost?
To be honest with you, it will cost more than the same garden with easy access. We can’t give a set figure, because it depends on your design, how long and winding the route through your house is, and how much material needs to move.
Most of the extra cost comes from time. Digging by hand takes longer than digging with a machine, and carrying everything in and out adds hours to every stage. On top of that, there are protection materials such as coreboard, sheeting and dust doors, along with the time to fit and remove them. Smaller deliveries usually cost a little more per tonne than bulk loads, and taking waste out through the house takes longer than using a side gate.
For a wider picture, our guide on how much a garden makeover costs in London and our tips on budgeting for a garden transformation are worth reading. You can also try our pricing estimator for a rough starting point. The most reliable way to know your own costs is an itemised quote that allows for your access from the outset.
How Do You Plan a Successful Through the House Build?
Start by walking from your front door to the back garden yourself, noting the narrowest door, the tightest corner and anywhere the ceiling drops. Talk to your contractor about how each section of floor and wall will be protected, and which rooms need sealing off.
Choose materials and methods that suit the access, and check that every large component has been sized to fit the tightest point. Agree where the waste will go and how deliveries will be spaced out. Ask about cleaning routines and footwear, then agree the schedule and the full cost, access included, before any work begins. If your plot is long and slim as well, our narrow garden ideas might give you a few thoughts while you plan.
Ready to Start Your Garden Without Side Access?
Having no side gate doesn’t mean you can’t have a new garden. With proper protection, sensible material choices and a team that plans the logistics carefully, your hallway can be the route to a new patio, a fresh lawn or the garden office you’ve had your eye on.
If you’d like to talk about your project, send us a few photos of the garden, rough measurements, your postcode and a short note on how we’d reach the back of the house. We’ll come back with a rough idea of cost, then arrange a visit to walk the route with you and give you a clear, itemised quote.
Get in touch with The South West London Gardener and let’s get your garden started.
