Build Your Own Beach

If you live inland but crave trips to the beach that's hundreds of miles away, you can turn an unused corner of your garden into a beautiful sea shore. All you need are some materials from your local landscape supplies store, a few willing helpers and a vivid imagination.

Your new beach resort needn't cost too much either. For a few hundred dollars' outlay, you could enjoy a perfect strip of sandy shore, complete with a sea view.

Creating the background setting

The first thing to do is to set the scene by painting a plain wooden fence in sea and sky colours. Paint the whole fence with a light blue shade of exterior house paint; soft gloss works well. When the paint has dried completely, place a piece of painter's masking tape along the fence and apply a darker blue shade of paint across the bottom.

Add a few whitecaps by dragging a rag soaked in white paint across the dark blue here and there, before the background is completely dry.

Sand dunes

Next, you need to make sand dunes. To do this, put down a couple of tonnes of decomposed granite and rake it into mounds of varying heights and depths. Scoop out a few pockets of the granite to create spaces for planting. Spread a few inches of gravel over the rest of the 'beach' space.

Firm the gravel by playing a garden hose over it and leaving it to harden-off overnight.

The following day, fill the planting pockets with compost and a little topsoil. Plant a selection of sea grasses and flowering seashore plants and water them well. Hardy plants that work well include:

• Eulalia grass
• Mexican feather grass
• geraniums

Finish off the dunes by covering the granite mounds with a few inches of soft sand.

Fire pit

Your beach would not be complete without a working fire pit. Take the base of an old kettle barbecue, open the bottom vents and set it into the gravel. Put the grill into the top of the kettle to hold your firewood. Place flagstones or natural rocks around the rim of the kettle and fit a spark arrestor over the top.

Spread more sand around the fire pit so that the whole beach area is covered.

Finishing touches

For a few authentic finishing touches, embed a few pieces of driftwood in the sand and use small mounds of pebbles and round cobble stones to break up the lines of the dunes.

If you need help creating the perfect beach scene and finding the proper landscaping supplies, contact a company like Hayter's Timber & Paving.