For backyards with steep slopes, uneven ground, or that experience significant erosion, a retaining wall creates an attractive barrier that safely holds soil back.
Of course, not all retaining walls are created equal. At Landscape Solutions, we’ve seen our fair share of crumbling retaining walls that missed the mark, now pose a safety hazard, and will come with a very expensive rebuild bill.
As a firm specializing in hardscaping features like backyard retaining walls, we understand the detailed engineering these structures require. Our team of designers and builders also understands how to create custom-tailored retaining walls that act as a backyard barrier while blending naturally with your home’s architecture.
If you’re worried about your backyard’s slope instability or eroding soil, get in touch with us for winter-ready solutions that resolve this tricky landscaping problem.
Winter’s Demands Are No Match for a Well-Built Retaining Wall
When winter arrives in Nashville, your landscaping undergoes stressors that aren’t always visible. Heavy rains, freeze-thaw cycles, and snowmelts all cause soil to expand, contract, and shift, leading to erosion, pooling water, slope instability, and even structural strain on your current backyard foundations over time.
A professionally engineered retaining wall becomes your property’s first line of defence against these issues. These walls are designed to keep soil where it belongs, channel water away from your property efficiently, and prevent winter weather from wreaking havoc on thoughtful landscaping.
Winter-Ready Features Every Retaining Wall Needs
A retaining wall should look like it belongs where it stands—like it was a conceptual element made to harmonize with your property. With the right materials and hardscape design plan, this structural solution becomes an architectural feature. Superior retaining wall landscaping balances engineering with aesthetics.
Landscape Solutions’ hardscaping designers design walls that stabilize your land as needed while enhancing its appearance, especially when winter strips back lush foliage and surrounding gardens so that the eye naturally lands on the wall. The entire scene should be a showpiece of precision and beauty, not a stark property barrier. Talk to us about how to achieve this so your backyard always looks its best.
Winter-Ready Features Every Retaining Wall Needs
To survive year after year, a retaining wall must address many aspects. As the unsung hero of structural longevity, a properly constructed wall must include:
- A drainage pipe along the base.
- Gravel backfill to move water freely and protect the wall from the pressure of water-saturated soil.
- Landscape fabric (specifically a non-woven geotextile filter fabric) to prevent soil from clogging the drainage system.
Once those elements are in place, it’s time to consider materials that can withstand Nashville’s elements. You can look into concrete blocks, poured concrete, or natural stone.
Design-Forward Retaining Walls That Enhance Your Property Year-Round
There are dozens of ways of accessorizing your retaining wall for an impactful visual effect. Building it out to form a patio adds extra living and entertaining space. Adding built-in planters with ample greenery, ornamental grasses, or winter-hardy plants like hellebores, sedum, or violas, softens the look of surrounding concrete or stone while adding a dash of color and dimension.
You can also consider integrating curves and multi-level terraces into your design plan to add visual rhythm and a grand sense of scale. Properly designed landscape walls can shape your backyard into a wonderfully functional and sophisticated outdoor living environment.
Retaining Wall Types
There are four key types of retaining walls to choose from, each serving a different purpose. Our designers and builders can discuss these options with you and explain why one choice would be better than another.
Gravity retaining walls are the simplest in the category and are generally used for smaller projects. Typically reaching three or four feet high, they’re often situated just behind a soil and garden area separating the property from the sidewalk. Common materials used to build these retaining walls include concrete blocks, natural stone, or visually interesting boulders.
Cantilever retaining walls are more complex and best suited to larger projects like basements and large landscaping areas. Using a reinforced concrete base, these walls leverage the weight of the soil on a base slab to counteract the pressure pushing against the vertical stem. This is your best choice for walls over four feet high and for areas with limited space. For areas with soft or loose soil, cantilever walls have deep enough foundations to provide a level of stability that other options can’t. With its cleaner, less bulky appearance, this is a popular choice among homeowners.
Anchored retaining walls use tension supports to resist the lateral pressure of the soil. These anchors can be steel cables or rods that are driven deep into the soil or rock and grouted to create a stable bond. This is the right choice when tall walls are needed for steep slopes or areas with limited space. Like cantilevers, these walls are incredibly structurally sound, making them a good choice for high-load applications that other wall types cannot handle.
Gabion retaining walls are your more rustic choice. Made of wire mesh baskets filled with rocks, concrete, or other heavy materials, they are a great choice for areas where drainage or erosion are issues. The caveat with this choice is that they may require more maintenance over time as the materials used to build them can settle.
The right retaining wall reshapes your backyard and the way you use it, so a considered approach to its materials, design, and shape is imperative. While the main purpose is to protect your property, a retaining wall quickly becomes a part of your backyard layout and should offer extra utility and lifestyle benefits.
Reach Out to Landscape Solutions for the Best Retaining Wall Solutions
Landscape Solutions blends structural expertise with detailed knowledge of retaining wall design. We work closely with our clients to understand their vision and their landscape challenges so we can provide solutions that deliver on more than practicality. We’re passionate about what we do, and with every project we take on, we enjoy passing this passion along to our clients so the end result is far greater than they imagined.
If your backyard is in need of a well-engineered retaining wall, get in touch. We’ll produce a plan that meets your desired budget and timeline, and which turns your backyard area into the beautiful and sophisticated living space you never knew it could be. Book a consultation today.