Landscape Retaining Wall Design Ideas

The fact is that there are many people who are unhappy with the idea of landscaping with retaining walls.  Landscape retaining walls are really one of the most neglected areas of landscape design.  Often, people think that they can get away without using a landscape retaining wall at all.  Sometimes, a whole landscape is designed around the elimination of thelandscape retaining wall.  Most people would assume that this makes it nicer, but this is not the case.  Instead of using landscape retaining walls, many designers will use extensive ground cover to hold the earth.  This means that, instead of other varied and interesting garden with a few landscape retaining walls to prevent erosion, they will have a lawn completely covered with plain boring grass.  While using landscaping walls would have allowed them to have vast areas of different plants growing, they will now be limited to a few small patches of garden instead.  This is no way to landscape!

Many of the best landscaping ideas, in fact, involve ways to incorporate different elevations of ground without running into problems of soil erosion.  This is especially important if you have a stream, pond, or other body of water on your property.  Even if it is a natural stream, you should consider landscaping with rocks, wood, or plain old concrete as a landscape retaining wall.  Otherwise, it is more than likely that you'll have substantial losses to erosion which will ruin whatever effect you are trying to achieve.

There is an idea that is commonly held that a landscape retaining wall has to be ugly.  At best, many people think of that landscape retaining wall as a necessary evil.  Even many landscapers think this way!  But in reality, if you understand the necessity of the landscape retaining wall come that you can designed in a way that incorporates aesthetically.  You can use it to create dramatic changes in elevation, incorporating small valleys, hills, raised or sunken walkways, and all sorts of other effects into the design and layout of your yard. You can make a landscape retaining wall out of all sorts of different decorative stones.  You can even incorporate inset tiles into your landscape retaining wall for a colorful and decorative effect. Thinking about all of the possible landscaping options can make you dizzy!  There are almost an endless number of things that you can do. Think of how much better these options are on plain old boring grass.