Retaining Wall Seats and Garden Border Benches

For 30 years we’ve been building and maintaining beautiful landscapes throughout the Richmond area. We love building long term maintenance relationships with our clients! We also love taking a blank, unused yard and turning it into an oasis for family and friends to gather. Creating cozy nooks and garden walls or enveloping a fire pit with a circular wall of seating is just something special. We know when we create these spaces, that memories and laughter will be made there. We can help transform your space with these garden wall and seating ideas and trends.

• Terraced levels for seating and gardens adds visual impact. A retaining wall by itself is just screaming to have a seat added to it with outdoor pillows surrounded by softscape perennials.
• Utilizing natural elements such as wood into the back supports or seating is a beautiful way to create contrast and invite people in.
• Create raised garden beds from the same paver materials as your retaining wall and seating area.
• Add seating or benches to an outdoor kitchen with a wall that surrounds your kitchen space.
• For older homeowners, or just smarter homeowners, raising your garden beds to a higher level that’s easier to reach and then surrounding them with a natural stone or paver seating ledge or bench makes gardening more accessible. We’re seeing retirement homes add these areas to their outdoor spaces for their residents. Why not do the same at your home?
• Adding natural stone as a seating ledge to a paver wall. The contrast of colors and textures creates a beautifully finished look.

Whatever landscaping ideas and visions you might have for your space, we can help make them a reality. Or, if you’re like most homeowners and just have a blank space in your yard that you’d like to make more inviting, our landscape design team can “wow” you with a beautifully landscaped outdoor living space that you didn’t even know was possible. Let our experts create something beautiful for your home! We’ll have you seated around a fire roasting marshmallows in no time. Give us a call today!

Retaining Walls in Richmond, VA

Retaining walls are a relatively simple way to add aesthetically pleasing visual interest in your landscape project for your Richmond home or Richmond business. People with many hills in their yard often have a hard time using the space effectively and beautifully, especially if the hills are very steep. Retaining walls are multi-functional! If those difficult slopes are walled off properly, they become much safer as well as more attractive and usable. Terraces can be built into the retaining wall design as well for added flowers and plants which can create a lovely flowing landscape look. A variety of retaining wall materials are available so that your Richmond landscaping project can suit your style as well as compliment the exterior of your home or business.

Having a properly installed retaining wall is important for your safety. The professionals of Beaver Farm Landscaping will start with a proper foundation when installing your retaining wall, large or small, to avoid any buckling or shifting. We can install free standing retaining walls, walls with seating built in terraces, segmental retaining walls (SRW), or simple garden walls to help keep your plants safe from unwanted visitors. For a more natural look, we can install a boulder wall using various sizes of rock and put in plants such as creeping sedum to continue the natural look.

Why use retaining walls besides the visual appeal?

paver walkwayA retaining wall is a structure that holds back soil or rock from a building, structure or area. Retaining walls prevent downslope movement or erosion, and provide support for vertical or near-vertical grade changes. Cofferdams and bulkheads, structures that hold back water, are sometimes also considered retaining walls. Retaining walls are generally made of masonry, stone, brick, concrete, vinyl, steel, or timber. Railroad ties were once very popular and inexpensive retaining material, but railroad ties have fallen out of favor . Retaining walls are often used as a barrier on a beach or shoreline to stop the earth from eroding and collapsing.

It is very important to keep in mind for your retaining wall design and proper installation that the material being retained is attempting to move forward and down a slope due to gravity therefore creating a lateral earth pressure behind the retaining wall. The effect of this pressure depends on the angle of internal friction and the cohesive strength of the retained material, as well as the direction and magnitude of movement the retaining wall is holding in place. Lateral earth pressures are typically smallest at the top of the wall and increase toward the bottom. These earth pressures will push the retaining wall forward or overturn it if this gravitational force is not properly addressed in design and installation. Also, beware of any groundwater behind the wall that is not dissipated by a drainage system because this can cause an additional horizontal hydrostatic pressure on retaining walls as well.