Add Building Landscape Walls to Your - To - Do - List.

Landscape walls can serve many purposes. If you have a steep slope you can built a series of landscape or retaining walls to hold the soil back and stop erosion.

If you have a slight slope a wall can become a flower bed with the benefit of added seating during outdoor entertaining events such as cookouts of parties.

You can also add visual interest within a space by building landscape walls. That is what we did. Stay with me to find out the details.

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Notice the picture of a curved wall below.

The picture above shows a curve in a wall we built in our backyard. This is in the center of the wall.

This wall is the focal point of our backyard landscaping. This picture is taken in 2008.

The slope was gradual. So it was not dramatic. The yard was filled in with fill dirt and several flower beds were made into the area near the landscape wall.

This wall is approx 60 feet long overall.

The end result of this wall is a beautiful focal point of the yard. A circle of flowers and 2 plum trees and a wrought iron arbor are in the space.

The reason the wall was started is because it was going to surround an in ground pool, replacing the above ground pool that was there. (Before I moved here).

The plan changed, as is life, and the in ground pool idea was scrapped. The 24 ft above ground pool was in the backyard when I moved here.

I looked at that pool from my kitchen window for 3 months during the winter and thought, I cannot look at this thing all the time!

The view from the window was a big black circle(the top of the cover). The view of the backyard was blocked by the pool.

We were already knee deep in indoor renovations, personalizing our inside space to update it and make it our style.

All of the kids were out of the house and I knew the upkeep out weighed the benefit to us, so we decided to remove the pool.

We placed an ad in a classified magazine and the pool was gone in a few days - to a family with kids that would enjoy it.

We gave it away. They removed it, all we had to do was drain the pool.

This photo below shows the same wall from the other side. The wall extends around 2 sides of the yard. It is approx 30 feet long on each side.

This provides a nice area for flower gardens in the backyard landscape. We have gotten rid of more items and it always seems as they say - one mans trash is another mans treasure. That is always better than just throwing things away or hauling them to the dump.

With the pool gone that left a nice big space in our backyard left for lots of possibilities. The change was wonderful.

I had not lived here a summer and did not want to look at the striped pool. It was old and very dated looking.

Now we have a big back yard with lots of areas. That is where some of our walls come in. It helps to form outdoor room, or outdoor spaces. Our backyard is a series of rooms now.

We have a patio area, a deck, space under the deck for a picnic table. A firepit area, a secret garden, the circle,(in the picture above of the curved wall,a kitchen fenced raised bed garden, And lots of spaces that connect them.

The picture below shows the pool over to the left side.This picture was taken in 2006.

As you can see in the picture below the pool took up alot of the backyard space.

We could never have enjoyed the garden spaces we have now, if we had kept it.

I certainly am glad it is gone. With the pool's departure the landscape wall was continued. And our backyard was filled with flowers, shrubs, and trees. That we chose together.

This is our style. That is the whole point of owning a home. Make it yours in more ways than just having a mortgage. Really OWN the property and make it a reflection of you.

If we decide to go to a pool there are plenty of them located locally, in town that we can visit and not have the bother of upkeep, and loss of backyard space.

Over the years we have added several walls of various heights to our landscaping.

Another one of our retaining walls was built to hold the soil next to our driveway. And remove the need to mow a steep area. See picture below.

We filled the space with soil and turned that area into a perennial flower bed. There are a variety of flowers planted in the new flower garden where the slope used to be.

The picture below was taken recently. A large portion of the wall is now covered in variegated ivy. It looks alot better than - a area of hard to mow grass, on a useless slope.

Another retaining wall was built next to the house on the (other end of the house) it also became a planter. It is tall enough on one end to sit on comfortably.

The area WAS part of our side yard. It is now part of our backyard after we extended out fence forward several feet and included the area into our backyard.

The picture below shows the wall as it was in 2007, before we made the changes in the fence.

The stack of materials in the picture is more pavers. That went into a patio enlargement project. We have alot of natural and man made stone in our landscape.

Work your landscape walls into other projects, visit this link for ideas