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Originally Posted by Richard[_8_]
rs at regular intervals
It's a retaining wall and I will get my builder brother-in-law to build
it. It will be two walls actually, a back wall and a front facing wall.
I can fill in the gap or not I suppose.
When I give it some consideration, I now see that I should use the wall
as a prop for plants. I was'nt thinking that at first. I'll make a
straight wall, I think that's probably best, but figure out how this
wall can be decorated by plants. I could also have plants on the top of
the wall, but perhaps this can be done with plant boxes.
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If it's a double wall with room for a bit of soil in between, you can plant ino that. Lots of walls round my way are done like that - it seems to be almost standard. Mine is south facing, so it is full of herbs, rock roses and aubretia. Since you are getting the sun in the summer when it matters, you could possibly do something similar.
I think you're right to go for plants rather than decorating the wall itself - it allows you more flexibility. IF the decoration is in the wall, than you can't ever change it if your tastes change (as all our tastes do, no matter how much we like to believe they won't).
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The top soil at my place is only about 5 inch deep before it turns to
sandy stony soil. What I need to do is ensure that I've got a good soil
situation near the wall.
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If you're growing creeping things to trail down the wall, you'll get away with 5 inches of good soil.
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Away from the wall, I will lay turf and lay a
lawn.
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Make sure you have a mowing strip between lawn and wall - you can mow right up to a wall, so you end up having to do the last couple of inches with shears, which'll take as long as mowing all the rest!
If you have a bed for planting at the base of the wall, then you don't need a mowing strip, but it is hand to have some sort of barrier to stop lawn grass growing into the bed - makes weeding a lot less troublesome. I have a 6inch strip of york stone all around my lawn - if I run one wheel of the mower along it, the cutter extends right to the edge of the grass.
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