May 04, 2011

Front Yard Retaining Wall

You might remember that late last year we started a front yard landscaping project to add a paver walkway and retaining wall.  In it's hay-day, our front yard looked like this:

But after a hot summer and tripping over the front bushes countless times while holding bags of groceries, we decided to remove the bushes and add a paver walkway instead.  At this point the front yard looked like this:


Not as pretty.  So we dug up the bushes and put down a paver walkway (you can read about that here and here).  And the pavers looked beautiful!  We were thrilled with how the walkway part of the project turned out.

stone-paver-walkway

landscaping-paver-walkway

But, we still had that not-so-pretty planter area to the left.  The concrete edgers were kind of a snooze and the lack of plants didn't add any excitement either.

front-yard-before

So once spring hit, we began to tackle this area and install a retaining wall. Rob had the honor of removing the old edgers and digging up the area.

retaining-wall-area

Then he started installing new pavers from Home Depot (I can't find them on their website but they are the Windsor 4" x 12" retaining wall block).  Since our front yard slopes, Rob broke out the lever to see how deep to place the pavers to create an even level.

retaining-wall-base

You can see here how some pavers were buried into the ground, while others weren't, to create a level wall in this photo:

installing-retaining-wall

Once the base was down, we added two more rows of pavers.  To help with the slope and also add some interest, we decided to do a two-tier retaining wall.

building-retaining-wall

paver-retaining-wall

And we ended up with this:

front-yard-retaining-wall

Not bad, right?! We also added some top soil to fill in the retaining wall so we can plant some pretty flowers and shrubs.

front-yard-landscaping-wall

We still have a lot of planting ahead of us, but all of the hardscaping is done and it looks pretty darn good, if I do say so myself.

paver-walkway-and-retaining-wall

Here's another look at how far we've come with a before/during/almost-after photo:


I'm really proud of the walkway and retaining wall so far and can't wait to add plants to finish the job.  Any suggestions for good heat-tolerant flowers and shrubs?

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