the great wall

One of the best features of our home is our outdoor fireplace. When we were looking for houses two years ago, the outdoor space of this house was one of the home’s best selling features. After living here a year, however, we decided we wanted to expand the yard to stop erosion, add more play area, and have space for a larger garden. The wall project was born. If you know my husband, you know he does 99% of our home improvement projects himself. Luckily, I was able to convince him that this project should be one we hire out.

Here is the before shot:

As you can see in this photograph, the area directly behind the fireplace had a pretty steep grade that would have to be walled eventually to avoid erosion.

We decided to build the wall 18′ out from the fireplace which ended up working perfectly because we couldn’t build out further because of the septic system. We also knew we wanted to keep as many trees as possible so we decided to curve the wall. (We did end up having to take out one tree, but it was unhealthy and would have needed to come out in a couple of years anyway.)

The first step of building the wall was to dig the footing. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of the footing hole. However, it was AMAZING to watch the skill of the backhoe driver as he excavated the hole. That man had skills! In order to drive to the back, the trucks created a path through our side yard and a portion of our neighbor’s yard (Luckily, they were redoing their front yard, so the agreed to let the trucks drive through.). The boys soon discovered that this path was also good for bikes!

Then the wall building began. This is half of the bricks we used.

It seemed like the loads of gravel and dirt would never stop coming. Each day brought a new load – or two!

Here is a detailed look at the stones. As you see, the stones are stacked offset of each other and then filled with gravel.

Gravel was also used for backfill.

Once the wall was complete, in came the top soil!

Next, we tackled the sod and the landscaping. We kept some of the original landscaping and added two spiral boxwoods and knock-out roses. The grasses on either side of the fireplace died during last year’s cold winter, so we thought the boxwoods would be a pretty, hardier replacement. The landscapers planted the boxwoods and knock-outs. We took care of the rest of the plantings. We had to use a pick-axe on EVERY plant. Yes, we have rock for soil.

Our new garden. Since the wall was behind schedule due to the crazy amount of rain we had this spring, we put it in about a month late. Hopefully, we will still have some success. We also have a garden on the opposite side of the wall as well. We put all the creepers: watermelon, pumpkins, cucumber, gords, etc. down below, so far they are doing pretty well. We did have to plant pumpkin plants since the squirrels ate all of the pumpkin seeds.