Building A Wooden Retaining Wall for Berms in the Landscape...

On my previous page, I mentioned that berms/retaining walls can be built as easy as 1...2...3...

Well, it's really not quite that easy. The outcome is amazing, however muscle power is the order of the day.

As you can see in the first image to the right, prior to piling up the dirt/mud against the wooden retaining wall, the wall must be built.

The next image shows a much better back angle view of the wooden retaining wall. We left a two foot wide space from the wooden wall to the wire fencing.

The long conduit shown in this image is going to be for the electric cord running to the back of the property and is not related to this project, but does prove the need for space behind a retaining wall.

To build, we dug holes 1 foot deep at 5 feet on center. Obviously, the number of poles required is determined by the length of the retaining wall.

The poles are 6 inch by 8 inch preserved 6 foot poles, cut to the required height. Our retaining wall is higher in the center, then tapers down on the sides. Why? Because our new berm is going to be higher in the middle section and will slope downwards. We did not want the retaining wall visible.

At this point, we nailed 2 x 6 preserved wood stringers to the posts.

In this closer image, you can see the wire fencing. This is the reason behind building the retaining wall. There is no support for the dirt and our property sides to an empty lot and will not be seen by the public from the back side.

Besides building retaining walls for berming in the landscape, this type of building method can be used to create raised flower beds or vegetable gardens. Just remember to use preserved wood.

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