Landscaping Rocks Blog

Building a stone retaining wall can be an intimidating prospect for a first-timer, but if you break it down into single steps and pay attention to detail, you’ll end up with a good looking, functional result.

Before you get started, remember to pay attention to your own safety. Wear steel-toed work boots and safety gloves. If you’re using a chipping hammer or anything else that could produce flying debris, wear safety goggles too.

Once you’re dressed to work, here’s what you do:

1. Check the soil at your work site to see if you have a wet area. If you do, make sure to drain it away from the wall area.
2. If the ground isn’t firm around where you plan on building the wall, compact the earth.
3. Your wall should have a slope of two and a half to three inches of incline per foot of height. For instance, a two foot high wall should slope back five or six inches.
4. Use two by twos or half-inch rebar for your stakes to install your lines. Make sure your first line is six inches off of the ground and your second is 12 to 18 inches higher.
5. If your wall is more that two feet high, remember to increase the width of the base. Your base’s width should be 75% to 100% of its height. For example, a six foot high wall should have at least a four to six foot wide base.
6. Once your lines are up, install your membrane (landscape geo-textile) against the bank. That’s the last major step before you actually lay the stone retaining wall.
7. Start with the wall’s ends and corners first. Work from them, toward the middle.
8. Fill in the back of your wall with rough stone and three-quarter inch width clean crushed stone. Make sure to pack the back of the wall tight using your heavy hammer.
9. Lay your stone with the one over two and two over one method as much as possible. In other words, you should avoid having a vertical seam that cuts across two stones. Vertical lines will lead to a weak joint in your retaining wall.
10. Save the larger flat stones for capping the wall. The cap could protrude out of the wall’s face by two or three inches. It looks nice, and helps divert runoff water.

Whether your wall is large or small, the key to finishing it is one stone at a time, laid well and with pride.

Stone Haven is now giving courses by appointment only. These draw on Mike Stone’s 40 years of landscaping experience.  Please call 450.242.0255 or email Mike at mike@stonehaveninc.ca to have your name included in our 2009 schedule.

Tags: English, Landscaping Rocks //