Landscape Design & Implementation: Walls

   This is a perfect example of how to turn a weedy, overgrown, difficult-to-maintain slope into a beautiful feature that looks neat, tidy, elegant, and significantly adds practicality to the space.  The material is sandstone quarried locally, just east and south of Tacoma.

   This is another example of turning a difficult slope into something more manageable and attractive.  The material is partially metamorphosed slate from western Montana.  It is a natural blocky stone that cleaves into mostly 90 degree angles.  The result is a more structured looking wall with a very flat face and strong geometric lines.

   This was a case of rebuilding an existing rock wall using the same material plus a little extra.  The original wall was not constructed properly and was falling apart.  It was also built as a single wall that was too high to be structurally sound.  We disassembled the entire structure, excavated the hillside, and built a two-tiered wall properly.  The material is locally quarried blue/grey basalt.

   This is another tear-down & re-do wall job.  The original wall was not constructed properly and was collapsing onto the sidewalk.  Unfortunately, the wall was also serving as support for the fence posts.  We disassembled the original wall, excavated a bit, and constructed a new wall with the same rock and some new rock as well.  The inclusion of the lighter colored stones was done to make an ordinary dark grey wall a little more interesting, plus, it references the colors of the house - a dark sage-grey with light grey trim.

   These are examples of small walls intended entirely as decorative features.  We developed this space from a flat, raw, wedge shaped piece of ground that existed as a result of a street closure.  The grade was built up at a couple of different points and retained with these walls.  It was done to add dimension to an otherwise flat, boring space.

   This is an example of a purely utilitarian, very practical wall in a public space.  It is a community garden, so the wall needed to be comfortable enough to sit/kneel/stand/walk on and take up as small a footprint as possible.  That is what engineered concrete block walls are best at.  I personally prefer natural rock in most cases, but there is a time and place for concrete blocks, and in some cases they can be the best aesthetic choice too.