There is an accessory that is almost always present when you do landscaping of a villa – a retaining wall. To be attractive a retaining wall in the yard or garden, it must be built of quality and effective materials (as in the photos taken by Mason2008, AlexWitherspoon and Hitchster).
Nowadays, there are many and varied ways to achieve this goal. Starting from bricks, aerated concrete blocks ytong, concrete, reinforced concrete, stones (natural and artificial) and even wood. пластмасов качествен ограничител за трева и райграс
Some professionals in the field of landscape design and landscaping even make combinations of these materials, which are quite successful. But undoubtedly the most beautiful and environmentally friendly remains the retaining wall, built of natural stone, this is already a wonderful finish spruce decoration of the yard and garden.
Retaining wallThe main rules we must follow when building retaining walls are: small stones should not be used, the stones should be uniform (to be of the same type), it is best to order the stones from the nearby quarry or from specialized shops, if possible choose the stones yourself, be on site when the stones are delivered to you, put the biggest stones at the bottom (as a base), because this way the wall becomes much more stable.
Before choosing the stones and buying them, it is good to clarify exactly where the wall will be, what it will be used for (whether you will strengthen something with it or just be decorative, whether it will be decorated with vegetation or not) and after Clarify it is good to choose the most suitable stone for your wall. Most often, retaining walls are built to overcome elevations in the terrain and to prevent landslides that can lead to serious problems. Retaining walls and decorative retaining walls are also built in places where there are stairs for greater security.
You should choose whether to use a binder for your wall or make it without mortar (dry masonry). The binders are different types of cement, lime mortars, which must be resistant to weather conditions in order for the wall to be as long as possible.
In dry masonry it is an advantage that with a large amount of groundwater, the wall plays the role of drainage or more precisely through the masonry can pass the free water which is largely an advantage over the walls that are made with mortar.
I will offer you several types of stones that you can use. In the first place is granite, it is extremely resistant to weather conditions and is quite durable. Its disadvantages are that it has a gray and dull color and if you do not decorate your wall with vegetation you risk it becoming quite ugly, but if you strengthen a steep slope, this is your stone. Analogs of granite are other magmatic rocks diorite and syenite, which have similar properties.
Colored retaining wall
Another suitable stone is limestone, but unlike granite, it has lower strength properties, is not suitable for strengthening slopes, although in practice it is used, but if you want to take limestone, it is best to consult a specialist. Limestone is easily weathered, has many interesting and bizarre shapes, its sharp edges are easily blunted, its surface is easily smoothed and easily overgrown with lichens and mosses.
If you have decided to „green“ your wall by decorating it with different plants, you must take into account that some plants do not tolerate limestone.
Otherwise, landscaping can be done by planting the plants over the retaining wall and letting them lie on it.
Another option for decorating the decorative wall with creeping vegetation is to make it a little thicker and leave niches in it in which the pots with the vegetation are placed. In Bulgaria there is an abundance of limestone – dark gray (Middle Triassic), gray-green, violet – red, light gray (Upper Jurassic) in the Balkan Mountains, creamy white Vrachanski (Lower Cretaceous), white massive (Upper Cretaceous) near Lom, Somovit, Ruse, Shumenst, white with gray stripes (tertiary) near Varna and Balchik.