This gorgeous wood-framed house is built on a corner lot in a community that is snuggled in the Crescenta Valley, just below the towering San Gabriel Mountains. His lot has about 8 feet of downward slope across its 150-foot depth. The original builder wanted a fairly level front yard.
A 4-foot-tall retaining wall was built along the south side of the lot to achieve this goal. The San Gabriel Mountains contain a wide variety of granite rocks. Flash floods roaring out of the canyons have tumbled these rocks like clothes in a dryer, rounding the sharp edges.
There are countless wonderful boulders the size of extra-large watermelons, cantaloupes and grapefruit. You can harvest these stones from nearby streams, and they're the perfect material for building a durable and attractive retaining wall. You might not have granite where you live, so make use of any suitable durable stone at your disposal.
Coarse fossil-filled limestone was abundant in my hometown, Cincinnati. There are thousands of retaining walls in the greater Cincinnati area built using this dense, strong stone. A necessary rebuild My friend's wall started to slowly succumb to gravity over the decades.
Several years ago it was leaning so much that the city condemned the wall. A public sidewalk next to the wall was not safe to walk on, as the wall could collapse without warning. I was able to view the wall a few years ago before it was condemned.
I was amazed that this wall was only one rock-width from top to bottom. Th.