Cornwall Home & Lifestyle Show 2015

This year, we decided to exhibit our range of Small Garden Gabions at the Cornwall Home and Lifestyle Show 2015. The 2 day event took place at the Royal Cornwall Showground over the bank holiday weekend on 2nd & 3rd May. The event was organised by Live Events South West and showcased the best of Cornwall's home related products and services. 

We have always been interested in exhibiting at the show but had yet to actually sign up. This year, when the offer came round, I wanted to give it a try and booked the show at the end of February which gave us just over 2 month preparation time. I designed the stand using our smaller garden range as these are best suited for private garden projects. 

I wanted to show customers how they could use gabion baskets to transform their garden into a more useful living space, that was both functional and stylish. I designed a gabion seating area which comprised of 2no. 975mm x 450mm x 450mm gabions, and 1no. 450mm x 450mm x 450mm gabion to form the corner planter.

Devoran Garden Gabions stand at the CHLS 2015.

For the seat tops, I used reclaimed pallet wood which was free and readily available. If you do have any trouble sourcing pallets they don't cost a lot to buy direct. They were really simple to build, and you don't need to be an expert joiner to make them. The seat tops were made  by cutting 2 lengths of 80mm wide wood to 450mm long and laying them vertically across the gabion baskets (front to back) approx. 600mm apart and 185mm from each end - these act as a support and fixing point for the seat. Once these are in place, you then need to cut the horizontal pieces to 1000mmm, so they are slightly longer than the basket, and screw into place along the support. You then need to use 2 pieces of wood approx. 40mm wide to form a border around the front and sides of the gabion, and fix them to the ends. In this case we only needed to cover 2 ends as the back and 1 side would not be seen. 

Gabion seat made from 975 x 450 x 450mm gabion baskets filled with local stone from Trecarne Quarry,

For the planters I used 450mm, 375mm and 300mm gabion baskets and simply cut the top mesh panel to size to suit each flower pot so they could be dropped into place during filling. 

Gabion planter made from 450 x 450 x 450mm gabion baskets.

It was a lot of hard work preparing for the show, especially setting up the stand on the Friday but it was well worth it. We would like to say a huge thank you to Trecarne Quarry for giving us the beautiful stone to fill the baskets and to everyone else who helped out along the way. Despite the rainy start, and even though we almost lost the gazebo altogether on Saturday morning in the wind, it was a really good weekend and the weather soon cleared. We had a lot of great feedback on the gabions; it's interesting how many people in Cornwall have a pile of stone just sitting in the corner of their garden that they have no use for...and now they do!! 

If you would like to browse our range of garden gabions and see how you can transform your garden, visit our website www.devoran-garden-gabions.co.uk.

Cornwall Home Directory

Devoran Metals are now listed in the Cornwall Home Directory hosted by the Cornwall Home Show. Showcasing some of the best products and services available in Cornwall, you are sure to find something you love! 

You can find our profile at:

http://www.cornwallhomeshow.co.uk/cornwall-home-directory/gardens/devoran-garden-gabions/ 

Devoran Garden Gabions: Single and ready to mingle!!

From April 2014 you can now order our BBA Approved Gabion Baskets as single units on the website rather than in packs.

Up until now www.devoran-garden-gabions.co.uk supplied gabions in pack sizes of 3 or 5, but now offer customers the choice to order as little or as many as they like. The company's sales team said, "we really value our customers and want to ensure that we are giving them the best possible service on the web. We understand how competitive the current gabion market is and think that giving our customers the option of purchasing single units rather than packs will help us gain new custom and keep us at the forefront of the market".

Why buy a Devoran Gabion?

Devoran Gabions are not inferior quality imports from the Far East. These Far Eastern Gabions may be slightly cheaper but in our experi-ence you will find that you get what you pay for. Devoran Gabions are BAA Approved and are of superior strength and quality. You can feel confident that when you buy from Devoran you are buying the best.

See our hand check list below to make sure you;re buying the right product.

Future Proof Yourself Against Floods!

Live Chat

We have recently launched a NEW Chat feature on our websites.

www.devoran-garden-gabions.co.uk

www.devoran-metals.co.uk

Our experienced sales team are now on hand on answer you questions at the simple click of a button. You can use the chat feature on your computer, tablet and smart phones. 

Give it a try...

  

Devoran Metals Love Your Garden!

Here at Devoran Metals we love nothing more than repeat custom, even more so when that customer is none other than Alan Titchmarsh. In May this year we were contacted by ITV to donate our Gabion baskets for the show "Love Your Garden"; a make over programme which completely transformed the garden of some very deserving members of the public. 

This was the second series of the show and comprised of 8 episodes. The gardens belonged to people who  had experienced very difficult times and are deserving of the gift of a new garden to enjoy. In all cases though out the series, the stories behind the families involved are truly heartbreaking but inspirational. 

The show focused on 8 families throughout the country, one of which belonging to a lady who runs a charity to raise funds for children with the same serious health condition, Sickle Cell Disease, that affects her own 16 year old Son. Without question we happily donated a range of 5mm Galfan Coated Gabion Baskets for the project and the results were stunning! The construction team on the project, The Outdoor Room who are responsible for numerous award-winning Chelsea and Hampton Court Flower Show garden builds, really did a wonderful job. You can see the results below:

Gabions provide a low-tech but stylish solution to create retaining walls.

The stone used in this project is natural Purbeck stone, quarried and prepared by Suttle on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset, Southern England.

Devoran Metals supplied 975mm x 450mm x 450mm & 450mm x 450mm x 450mm Gabion Baskets in 5mm wire.

To browse or buy our gabions online, visit http://www.devoran-garden-gabions.co.uk/. Prices start from £11 + VAT.

Devoran Metals Log Baskets

Great Gabions!

At Devoran Metals we don’t just supply our high quality gabions in the South West, we send them nationwide and we have received some great feedback and project updates from our customers. We never fail to be impressed by our customers’ ability to transform an area with our gabions combined with their imagination.

An example of this can be seen in the following picture taken by our customer Glynis of her new patio, featuring gabion seating which also doubles as a low retaining wall supporting a number of terraced planting beds. When her new patio was put in, the local crazy paving stone from the old patio was kept and recycled to fill the gabion baskets and gave the whole feature a really smart look, as well as saving on the cost of filling them and reducing waste.

 This gabion wall was created by Jacqueline who needed to replace a crumbling dry stone wall that retained a high bank next to the house. Again, she has recycled the old stone that was taken from the crumbling wall to fill the gabions. Jacqueline said to us it is ‘a great example of what an inexperienced builder can do’.

This impressive gabion feature wall is retaining a large embankment where a new build house was built into the side of a hill. It looks really smart and also provides an effective solution as an alternative to a reinforced concrete wall.

Here you can see where a stream was scouring away the end of a customer’s garden, so they used gabion baskets built on a base of gabion mattresses for stability, to stop further erosion to the garden and therefore enabling the client to regain the use of their back garden. Gabions and gabion mattresses are a great solution in this kind of situation and they are frequently used to construct flood defences due to their inherent strength and versatility.  

This fabulous garden patio seating shows our gabions in a new light! They don’t just look great when built up to form a wall; they can be a practical and attractive addition to any garden. Here they have been filled with round stones and topped with wood to form a bench and a seat, mixing the contemporary with a very natural feel. Our range of smaller garden gabions is ideal for this kind of project.

When designing your garden with gabions, the only limit is your own imagination. We have seen some wonderful examples of gabion use in the garden, from fire pits to fence posts, planters to patio seats. You don’t have to use stone to fill them either. If you are planning on using them as a decorative feature, why not try logs, chimney pots, glass bottles, or even shells? When filled with logs, twigs, canes and so on, they provide a home for valuable garden critters. You could even plant herbs or grasses in the gabions and create a ‘living wall’.

If filling your gabions with stone, remember you need stone at least 100mm as the gabion mesh is 75mm x 75mm. The general rule is to allow 1.6 tonnes of stone per m³, although allow for some variance depending on how tightly you pack the stone.

Visit our eBay Gabion Shop!

Devoran Metals now have a Gabion store on eBay where you can buy single gabions rather than packs of 5. They are proving to be very popular with the eBay community. They can be sent by courier or pallet (depending on total size & weight) and are generally delivered to your door within 2-3 working days.


Head on over and take a look!

Devoran Metals show a 'hole' lotta love for the Phoenix Stroke Appeal

When there's a Charity Golf Day on, you may expect that Devoran would be supporting it by sending our MD Richard up to it to hit a few balls, score a few birdies and maybe sink a few pints at the 19th hole, but when the details came through to us about the Phoenix Stroke Appeal event at Killiow Golf Club in Truro we went a step further and sponsored a hole!
The Phoenix Stroke Appeal is BBC Radio Cornwall's dedicated charity. They aim to raise £500,000 to help stroke survivors in Cornwall. It looks like the event was a great success and the sun came out to shine on all the participants! We wish BBC Cornwall every success in hitting their £500,000 target.

Phoenix Stroke Appeal
http://www.rcht.nhs.uk/RoyalCornwallHospitalsTrust/WorkingWithUs/FundraisingAndVolunteers/Appeals/Appeals.aspx

Killiow Golf Club
http://www.killiowgolf.co.uk/

BBC Radio Cornwall
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radiocornwall/programmes

Devoran Metals Ltd
http://www.devoran-metals.co.uk/
http://www.devoran-garden-gabions.co.uk/

Even Alan Titchmarsh loves Devoran Garden Gabions!

Here at Devoran Metals we received an interesting call from the production team at ITV's 'Alan Titchmarsh Show'. They had seen our gabion website and were interested in using them for an upcoming feature on recycling and upcycling household goods. The focus was on the office and our gabions were used to store files and to provide a stand for a scanner.

We had never seen them used in this way before but it certainly gave us food for thought. We've seen gabions used outdoors filled with all sorts of items from the regular stone fill to wine bottles, plant pots and shells, but the idea of using them indoors had never occured to us. So it seems the possibilities really are endless!

Wonder if we could replace our office counter with a funky gabion wall? Now that would be eyecatching!

To browse or buy our gabions online, visit http://www.devoran-garden-gabions.co.uk/

Not just one way to fill a gabion...

Thought you could only fill a gabion basket with bulky, heavy stone? Think again....

Recently we have seen some great examples of gabion use and novel ways to fill them. Some of our garden gabions were sold to two garden designers for use in their display at Ecobuild 2011.

Jacquetta Menzies and Catherine Thomas used plant pots, fir cones, logs, twigs and turf to create interesting and visually appealing gabions for their stand. Jacquetta said "we packed the gabions with different materials. We had intended to use all Grassfelt but it was too heavy so we improvised. We had many enquiries about the gabions."

Jacquetta and Catherine's garden design work can be seen on their websites:

http://www.jacquettamenzies.co.uk/

http://www.catherinethomas.co.uk/

Our lorry driver Trevor Cornwell also spotted a great gabion display whilst out cycling the Camel Trail one weekend. The gabion clad Camel Trail Gateway Building (designed by CSA Architects) 'is created from gabion baskets filled with local materials representing the Camel Trail and its historic connections to the mining industry, including locally quarried natural stones, locally collected shells, bottles from the nearby Camel Valley vineyard and internal metal workings of old trams.'

Trevor took some close up photos of the gabions to show us all back in the office. We think it looks great!

Further information and photographs of this project can be found at www.csa-architects.co.uk/projects/leisure/camel-trail-gateway-wadebridge.htm

Gabions can be purchased through our online shop at www.devoran-garden-gabions.co.uk