Retaining Walls

A wall is mostly what you can't see

The block is the part people look at. The part that decides whether the wall is still standing in ten years is the base — a compacted stone footing, the first course set dead level, gravel backfill behind the block, and somewhere for water to get out.

Walls fail because water builds up behind them and pushes. Drainage is not an upgrade on a retaining wall. It's the wall.

Block, boulder, or a slope instead

Segmental block is the usual answer — it's clean, it's stackable, and it handles a curve. Boulder walls suit a rural property and a taller bank, and they look like they belong there instead of like they were shipped in.

Sometimes the honest answer is that you don't need a wall at all: the bank can be cut back to a slope that holds itself, seeded, and left alone for a fraction of the money. If that's the case on your job, we'll say so.

Height matters

Past a certain height a wall stops being a landscaping job and becomes an engineered structure, with reinforcement layers back into the hillside and, in some places, a stamped design. If your bank is tall enough for that to be the case, we'll tell you before you've spent anything.