Good fences make good neighbors and good garden walls make happy neighbors. Garden walls are attractive, practical, easy to build, and add aesthetic value to both your property and your neighbor's.
The wall itself can be very decorative, romantic in fact. Make sure that your wall fits in the overall style and design of your garden. English gardens, the more romantic variety can't do without one
Use garden walls to contain raised flowerbeds or to serve as a decorative boundary to your yard.
Because low walls are easier to construct and require less maintenance most garden walls are less than 3 feet in height. Low height also simplifies construction and also lessens the danger of injury caused by a collapsing wall.Garden Wall
Building a garden wall can be an interesting and fun weekend project.
The easiest material to work with when building garden walls are preformed masonry blocks. They fit together tightly and eliminate the need for concrete filler. However, garden walls can be made of stones, bricks or even wood.
It's always a good idea to plan garden walls on paper before you actually start building. This allows you to visualize the layout of your garden as well as how the wall fits into it.
Garden Wall's are the perfect addition to an English country garden.
The most important part of any wall is its foundation.
Begin by digging a trench for the foundation. Dig a foot or two deep and level the bottom with a layer of sand or gravel. Keep the trench straight with the use of guidelines - string attached to pegs hammered into the ground. A level foundation is especially important for garden walls made of preformed concrete masonry or bricks.
Stone Garden Walls
If you use stones to build your garden wall, also use concrete filler to strengthen it. Build a temporary wooden frame to contain both the concrete and the stones.
Gradually fill the frame and remove it when the concrete hardens. This mixture of stone and concrete construction makes for very strong garden walls.
Build a Brick Garden Wall
A brick wall in a garden has an attractive, warm appearance. Brick garden walls can be expensive to have installed but if you do the work yourself, they can be quite reasonable. Although laying a brick wall is a fairly simple process, if you've never done it before, a practice run may be in order.
Dry stack the bricks to get an idea of how they fit together and how many bricks you actually need. If you're building up an incline, you need to build the foundation in a series "steps". Measure each step so that it accommodates a certain number bricks plus mortar. You don't want to cut any bricks for the foundation of brick garden walls.
The most difficult part of building a brick garden wall is working with the mortar, so you may want to practice with a mixture of sand and water to get used to the feeling of working with mortar. The usual mixture for mortar is one part cement to five parts of clean sand. Additionally, a plasticizer is used to make the mixture smoother and easier to handle. Once you've mixed the mortar, it has to be used within 1 1/2 to two hours.
Lay bricks in a staggered fashion so that joints occur over the middle of the underlying brick. Periodically check that your wall is straight and level. Use string guidelines and a carpenter's level to keep things lined up. Because brick garden walls are usually only one brick thick, if you build higher than 38 cm, you'll need to reinforce your wall with pillars.
Garden Walls Serve Many Purposes
In addition to distinguishing property lines, garden walls can also be used to construct raised flowerbeds. Once the wall has been built, simply fill the space behind it with soil and plant your flowers and shrubs to give a distinctive and attractive touch to your backyard.
Garden walls may be purely decorative or serve to contain a raised garden, divide one section of the garden from another, or provide privacy from neighbors. Building your own brick garden wall is a satisfying experience that adds both beauty and function to your garden.