Tips For Building The Best Retaining Walls

The best retaining walls are those that are necessary, versatile AND beautiful. These handy structures are meant to perform a variety of tasks simultaneously, such as creating a barrier between soil and grass, providing stability to a sloping landscape, and preventing soil erosion.

Not only are retaining walls functional, but they can also add an attractive, unique appeal to any landscape. Since they can be built out of a variety of materials (such as wood, brick, concrete, and stone), these walls can be designed to fit the look and feel of almost any space.

Although retaining walls are both practical and appealing, they can also be difficult to build without the right materials, and often require a great deal of precision, accuracy and patience to be successful.

Our Mountain View Landscaping team is passionate about helping you be successful in all your landscaping endeavors. That’s why we want to offer you these…

Tips For Building The Best Retaining Walls

Every type of material has its pros and cons, so make sure to do your research and select the one that will work best with your specific tastes and needs. Examine your budget restrictions, the structure of your landscape, and the overall look/feel you’re going for to help you make the best decision possible.

Retaining walls can be modified to fit a range of heights and widths. Consider the materials you’re using and make sure they’re structurally sound to support the height you’re intending to reach. Then, check with your city’s regulations before building to ensure these height specifications are up to code.

Much like with brick laying, retaining walls are meant to be built using a “staggering” method to ensure both their appeal and structural integrity. It can also be helpful to layer smaller blocks/stones with larger ones when stacking to create a more creative appeal.

Not all retaining walls have to be boring. Add some excitement to those straight lines by adding materials of different shapes, shades, and textures, such as in our Rock Wall (top picture) below. This technique will help your retaining wall “pop”with color and style.

Adding curves (second picture) can also add a beautiful, unique appeal to your retaining wall.

You can also make an impression by placing an attractive water feature behind the wall (third image), or by adding staircases to add depth and dimension to the landscape (fourth image).








By using the right amount of effort, knowledge, and experience, paver patios can become a gorgeous and functional addition to any landscape.

However, some folks don’t have the time or energy to spend attempting to build one of these while simultaneously making sure it’s up to code. Thankfully, our Mountain View Landscaping team has over 25 years of experience in building the best retaining walls for our Oregon clients. (Want to see more of the retaining walls we’ve built? Click here to view a few more samples).

Contact us today and we’ll help you make your landscaping dreams a reality!