Building A Rock Wall Garden

Rock garden designs can range from to sprawling naturalistic creations to faux dried river beds to rustic mounds of stones soil and plants it all depends on your preferences and the amount of space and rock you have to work with.

Building a rock wall garden.

Terrace gardens date back to ancient times and are still a beautiful but rarely seen luxury in modern times. All kinds including wood rock stone brick gabion concrete low garden and more. This will allow me to terrace my property and give me more usable space for gardening play. Though it can be hard work building a rock wall is well worth the effort whether it will be used as a retaining wall foundation or garden fence.

After spreading the mortar but before laying the next stone use the trowel edge to cut the mortar even with wall face. The key to building a wall using mortar is when you apply the mortar it needs to go evenly onto the run of stones that are set. Dry stacking with no mortar is the quickest method to build a rock wall but it won t last. Once built you ll have a rock solid retaining wall without all the heavy mortar lines.

This prevents mortar from running down the face of the wall. Prepare the footing photo by russell kaye. If you live in bakersfield los angeles or one of the other big cities with no rocks except by the pound from the local materials company look around for somebody removing some concrete. Contemporary terrace gardens and retaining walls tend to be much smaller and modest in most residential landscaping designs and while some are works.

This ditch will act as the wall s footing and prevent the rocks from sliding forward due to pressure from the earth behind. If you have a small area often the best design is a simple round raised bed made of select rocks this design can fit neatly into any well chosen nook and will. Try to cut the ditch into native soil rather than loose added soil as the former provides a more stable foundation for the wall. Line it with landscape fabric overlapped 12 inches at the seams add a 6 inch layer of inch stone and tamp it.

A river rock wall adds character to any landscape and will help define property lines. An ideal rock has six parallel faces like a brick. If you an uneven yard a stone retaining wall can help prevent erosion and provides a nice place to plant. Dig a trench that s below the frost line and 2 feet wider than the wall.

Constructing a wall is backbreaking work but the results will be a structure that will for last for generations. How to build a rock wall 1. Pick them up and make a rock wall or place them next to each plant on the flat and call it a rock garden. Dig a ditch the length of the wall that is about a foot wide and 8 to 12 inches 20 5 cm 30 5 cm below the ground level.

Regretfully there aren t many ideal rocks available so look for angular rocks with the most flat faces. Join me as i build my first ever dry stack retaining wall.