Landscape Garden Walls
Watch this landscape architect explain how he selects garden wall height and materials.
A video transcript featuring Joseph Huettl, Huettl Landscape Architecture
So far, the composition of this design was to use a series of parallel walls that would define and divide the spaces without totally obscuring the whole yard. We actually used a 3D modeling program to play around with wall heights until we got a wall height that we were happy with.
This wall height is approximately 30 inches tall, which allows somebody to be able to prop themselves up against it and sit on it, and yet it's high enough (24 inches) just to feel high enough. These particular walls are constructed with a concrete footing and then reinforced and filled, with new blockwork and then two coats of stucco, the final coat being a steel-trowel, smooth-finish stucco mix.
Getting a smooth wall finish
When you do these masonry walls out of blockwork, a standard practice is to allow plenty of time for the stucco coats to cure before applying the following coat. If you don't allow enough time, you can have the block lines showing through the walls.
In a landscape situation, unfortunately, you frequently don't have that much time because the project needs to progress, and waiting the 20-plus days for the coats to cure isn't always practical. In this case, we did have the time, and there are also products you can use to overlay the stucco, the bonding agents which help reduce cracking lines showing through.
