• Home
  • ABOUT
  • VIDEOS
  • Contact
  • SHOP

The Impatient Gardener

Garden

Putting up walls

June 14, 2011

The hardscaping continues in the back yard. I didn’t really want to take on all these hardscaping (read: moving lots of stone) projects at the same time, but it only made sense to order all the material at once and, well, you can’t have 10 tons of stone sitting in your driveway for very long.

Since we have a sloped back yard, I decided to do a tiered garden off the deck with a small retaining wall. Anyone who reads this blog knows where the inspiration for this came from: the lovely gardens at the Hotel Iroquois on Mackinac Island that I talked about here and here.

The difference between building the path and building this mini retaining wall is that while I’ve laid small flagstone paths before and have a pretty good idea how to do it, I have never built a wall and have very little idea how to do it. I’m happy there will be garden beds in front of the wall so technically it shouldn’t really be used for anything other than looks and retaining dirt. No one should really be sitting or standing on it, and that makes me feel better because I’m not sure it’s the most stable wall ever built. Humpty Dumpty beware.

Anyway, here’s the basic process I followed.
1. After figuring out where I wanted the wall and laying it out (by the way, in my typical fashion of second guessing everything, I’m not sure I’d put the wall in the same place again but I just really needed to get this project done and I didn’t think it through as much as I probably should have) I dug a trench where I wanted the wall, about 8 to 10 inches deep.

2. I filled the trench with the same road base material I used on the path. The tricky part was leveling this base as much as possible. Then I tamped it all down.
Wall1
Wall2
When I said I tamped down the base in the trench I was referring to using an actual tamper but Hudson seemed to think he could do a better job. How a 145-pound dog manages to lay down in a 10-inch wide trench I do not know, but he was not interested in moving (second photo is the view from the deck).

3. Since I was using natural stone rather than a man-made block, laying the first row was difficult and time consuming. I wanted to make sure it was as level as possible, which was tricky when the stones varied in thickness as much as 2 to 3 inches.
Wall3
Laying the first course was the most time consuming part of the project because I wanted to get it at least close to level.


4. After the first row was laid I just started added courses. The process went pretty quickly at this point. I just tapered the wall at the ends as necessary and went as high as needed to created a garden bed level with the patio.

5. I backfilled the wall with the road base about three-quarters of the way up the wall, and then used dirt. We filled in the whole area with all the dirt we dug out for the path so fortunately we didn’t have to bring in any additional soil.
Wall4
There’s a lot of stuff laying around and a shovel standing in for a tree, but you get the idea of what the completed wall looks like. There will be garden in front of it where you see grass in this photo.


Overall, I’m happy with the look but right now it requires a little squinting to really imagine it because I still need to dig the garden on the “lawn side” of the wall, not to mention plant it (although much of the planting will be done next year as I’m running out of funds and energy). Unfortunately, I also have to build a small version of the wall on the opposite side of the garden to contain a very mounded corner of the garden.

Oh and the time on this one? About 90 minutes of digging one day and then the majority of the following day to touch up the trench and build the wall, but I was flying solo on this one. It’s pretty damn amazing what you can accomplish when you REALLY want to get the pile of stone in your driveway moved.

garden path
by Erin @ The Impatient Gardener 
6 Comments

About Erin @ The Impatient Gardener

View all posts by Erin @ The Impatient Gardener

Related Posts

  • glowing dahliasGrowing dahlias as garden plants
  • Garden goals work best when they move
  • pink flower urnThe 2018 garden: Delightful dahlias and never-ending projects
  • veg garden shadowNow’s the time to plan for next year’s garden
previous post: My name is Erin and I'm a Tomato Hoarder
next post: We interrupt your gardening to give you a reason to drool

Comments

  1. roisin says: June 14, 2011 at 12:46 pm

    fantastic Erin!!! it is lovely! cant wait to see the plantings. fabulous ob!

    Reply
  2. roisin says: June 14, 2011 at 12:47 pm

    fabulous job I mean 😉

    Reply
  3. Jennifer says: June 14, 2011 at 12:51 pm

    I am really happy to see this post! We are going to embark on a wall project here in the front of our house, building three small walls. Yours looks great! Also kudos for doing it all yourself. 🙂 That will be a nice big garden bed!

    Reply
  4. Erin Schanen says: June 14, 2011 at 12:57 pm

    Thanks Roisin! Couldn't have done it without you. To fill readers in, Roisin, who has built several walls before, walked me through the process so I had a clue before I started.

    @Jennifer, that's actually my concern: it is a pretty big bed. I think I should have made it smaller. The plant placement and design parts of gardening are probably the most fun but it's also where I struggle the most and I find it particularly difficult to plan these gardens that are viewable from multiple sides.

    Reply
  5. Ms. Wis./Each Little World says: June 15, 2011 at 8:52 pm

    Can't believe how quickly you got that done. You will be glad you backfilled with gravel since Mark just rebuilt a wall that fell over cause we just backfilled with dirt.

    Reply

Leave Your Comments Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

About

The Impatient Gardener

Do you love gardening? Me too! I'm Erin and I garden in Southeastern Wisconsin, zone 5. The Impatient Gardener is all about real-life gardening: the good parts, the bad bits and even the funny stuff. It's part information, part inspiration and a little bit commiseration. Thanks for visiting.

Here's some more about me.

CONNECT

Awards

Garden Comm award

MY FAVORITE GEAR

https://www.amazon.com/shop/impatientgardener

Instagram

impatientgardener

Erin Schanen 🌿 The Impatient Gardener
I fell in love with gardening through container de I fell in love with gardening through container design and it’s probably still my favorite type of gardening. My trip to Philadelphia area gardens was full of so many excellent ideas. For several years I’ve been enamored with clustered pots, but in my opinion they work best when they are able to stand alone in a space. And you probably know me well enough by now to know that as far as I’m concerned, the bigger the pot, the better. Feast your eyes on these beauties and use your zooming fingers to really get into those nooks and crannies. 

Don’t forget to save your favorites because you know you’re going to be looking for them come next spring. 😀

Photos 1 & 2: Amazing container cluster at @longwoodgardens  that works particularly well because of the restraint used in the design. Also how many different ways is the universe going to tell me I need to grow agave before I actually listen?

Photo 3: This was probably favorite display I saw the whole time and of course it’s from the masters at @chanticleergarden This is a master class in texture. It’s also probably not attainable for the average home gardener because it relies heavily on tropicals that need proper overwintering in order to reach a good size. But there’s no reason why I (or you) couldn’t use this as inspiration to create a similar feel with other plants. 

Photo 4: Strappy foliage, bright orange and colorful pots create such a good doorway collection at @chanticleergarden 

Photo 5, 6 & 7: Similar colors were used at a patio doorway at Steve and Ann Hutton’s Owl Creek Farm home garden. A pot is perfectly framed by an arbor off a side patio. The front entrance has a pink theme (and an amazing feature pot that I couldn’t show here because all my shots are vertical). 

Photo 8: Back to @chanticleergarden where I could have studied this container planting for an hour just to soak up all the detail. 

Photo 9: And while I love a pot with a lot going on, never underestimate the power of a simply planted, gorgeous pot, like this one at @abunting64 garden Belvidere. 

#gbfling2023
I think every garden probably needs a little bit o I think every garden probably needs a little bit of water, even if it’s just a bird bath. All of the fabulous gardens I saw recently in the Philadelphia area incorporated water into them. Here are just a few examples of how lovely these water features were. 

@paxsonhillfarm @northviewgarden @brandywinecottage @longwoodgardens #gbfling2023
Gardens must have places to relax and enjoy the vi Gardens must have places to relax and enjoy the view even though we all know that most of us rarely take the opportunity to use them. The seating I saw in gardens in the Philadelphia area reflected their gardens and all were special. 

Make sure to share your favorite!

Photo 1:  I adored these perfectly lichen-covered chairs at @brandywinecottage

Photo 2: Great lichen game on this bench at Wayne Guymon’s mind-blowing garden WynEden. 

Photo 3: Perhaps my favorite seating moment of the whole trip was this chair in @jennyrosecarey @northviewgarden . Not only was it perfectly lichen covered (are you sensing a theme here?) but a volunteer cleome was growing right up through the middle of it. Unfortunately this photo of it isn’t grata because by this point in the trip my phone (I didn’t want to use my DSLR in the middle of the tropical storm so I switched to my phone) was getting very grumpy about the rain. 

Photo 4: I’d be happy to hang out on these chairs in @abunting64 ‘s gorgeous garden Belvidere. I loved this space. 

Photo 5: Color was the name of the game on this patio at Steve and Ann Hutton’s Owl Creek Farm. 

Photo 6: The most original table and benches I saw were at @abunting64 garden. This was a portion of the garden that was actually on the neighbors’ property adjacent to Andrew’s. It had been a vegetable garden but is getting a bit too shady so it will soon have a new life. 

Photo 7: We visited Barbara Tiffany’s Mill Fleurs in a deluge, which is a shame, and dotted throughout the property are examples of her husband Tiff’s amazing furniture. This was, called the Centipede was upholstered and quite different from the others. All were amazing works of art. 

Photos 8 and 9: The @scott_arboretum at @swarthmorecollege had some excellent seating, from brand new @deebenarc chairs to more lichen-covered charmers.

#gbfling2023
*** I can already see that some people do not unde *** I can already see that some people do not understand humor so let me just say this: 1. I was fully aware of the escaped convict situation (I’m an avid follower of the news, which is common for us journalists). 2. It’s ok to laugh about the fact that I’ve missed the Longwood meadow twice through weird circumstances while being a rational adult and realizing that I’m not making light of the situation that led to the meadow being mown. ***

I missed seeing @longwoodgardens beautiful meadow the first time I visited so I was excited to see it the second time. Not so fast! Turns out it had to be mown down during the search for an escaped convict who was hiding out there (at least that’s what I was told was the reason for the mowing). He’ll never see goldenrod the same way again! 😀

That whole situation was really unfortunate for @longwoodgardens (not to mention everyone who lives in the area), which had to be closed for about a week while the hunt was on!
Load More Follow on Instagram

SEARCH

Popular posts

  • HOW TO MAKE A HOLIDAY WINDOW BOX
  • Three ways to grow annual poppies
  • GARDEN TOUR: WHERE CONIFERS AND TEXTURE RULE
  • Slip slidin’ away to trash organization heaven

Find us on Facebook

Archives

  • ABOUT
  • TALK TO ME
  • TERMS & DISCLAIMERS
  • PRIVACY POLICY
  • Home

Copyright © 2023 · Prima Donna theme by Georgia Lou Studios

Copyright 2009-2021 ©The Impatient Gardener