Are you feeling less than satisfied with the areas surrounding your Issaquah and Renton, WA Areas home and property? There can be many reasons why a landscape isn’t working well for your needs, including steep slopes, hills, and awkward areas where you can’t seem to find a solution. The solution could be a stone retaining wall, often used in landscaping to create different levels of elevation, to prevent erosion, and to add visual interest. See how this structure can change your outdoor space for the better.
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Defining Functional Spaces
Retaining walls can be used to delineate where certain activities take place in your landscape. For example, if you want your backyard patio to primarily be an entertaining spot that’s sectioned off from the rest of your yard, a strategic way to do so is by adding a retaining wall.
These walls can be used to create an elevated area for a patio or deck that is especially useful in areas with sloping terrain. Use stone retaining walls to create raised planting beds, to create a focal point in the landscape, or to keep animals and pests away from the plants.
Remedy Erosion
Retaining walls offer aesthetic beauty but they are also useful for minimizing the effects of erosion. Soil in your yard can shift or there can be a slope that brings erosion and a retaining wall offers a fitting solution. This is an important purpose of a retaining wall as erosion can cause damage to your home’s foundation, mar the state of your landscaping, and leave costly damage behind after storms.
Increase Seating in an Outdoor Living Area
Create a built-in bench by simply building a retaining wall that is high enough to sit on or integrating built-in seating into a taller wall. You can then add a cushion or pillow to the bench for more comfort.
This type of use is especially beneficial in an area where you entertain outdoors, such as by an outdoor kitchen or fire pit. You can have this wall built by your outdoor dining area so that guests can grab a drink and a slice of wood-fired pizza from your outdoor oven and socialize with everyone else in attendance.
Establish a Windbreak
Retaining walls can be used to create a windbreak around your patio, deck, or other outdoor space. To create a windbreak, simply build a retaining wall on the side of the space where the wind blows most often. You can then plant shrubs or trees in front of the wall to create additional protection from the wind. Adding a water fountain or waterfall with a pond below adds interest to the wall and brings the calming, sweet sounds of spilling water to your outdoor living areas.
To Add Privacy
Retaining walls can be used to create a privacy screen around your patio, deck, or other outdoor space. Curved stone walls that follow the lines of the patio can be used to create a variety of different shapes, such as circles, ovals, and serpentine curves that enhance privacy in a visually interesting way. Varying the height of the wall offers more privacy with a sophisticated flair, minimizing the actual wall and focusing more on the elegant design that screens an outdoor space from view.
Related: How a Fire Pit and Retaining Wall Can Complement Each Other in Maple Valley and Sammamish, WA