Building Wall Gardens - Strength beauty and Style

Both the strength and beauty of a dry wall may be enhanced by using it as a wall garden. It may acquire a mossy and aged appearance simply by green-planting in the soil in the crevices. A greater degree of color can be obtained, however, by planting any of several flowering plants, whose strong roots will serve the additional function of holding the wall together.

Typical plants which may be used to good effect are: such flowering types as azaleas, alyssum, evergreen candytuft, heather, phlox, garden pinks, sedum, snowy rock cress, and creeping veronicas; such spreading plants as lavender, moss, phlox and hardy verbena; small rosettes and little tufts that need sun and room for roots like sempervivium, dwarf iris, dwarf pinks and yarrow; and the plants you can grow from seed sown among the rocks such as bleeding heart, some ivies and varieties of poppy and phlox. Semperviviums, azaleas, prostrate junipers and dwarf azaleas keep a bank or rock wall green all winter.

Mortared and Concrete Walls

Mortared walls involve somewhat simpler construction problems than dry walls. The mortar serves as the bond and it is not as essential to match the stones. For the masonry wall, a cement mixture of 1 part Portland cement and 2 parts sand is a good bonding agent. Mortar should be liberally applied to form a bed for each stone as it is added, and the chinks between stones should be well filled with smaller pebbles or gravel. The mortared wall is much more permanent than a dry wall and easier to build.

A concrete wall has greater strength than either a masonry wall or a dry wall. It requires the building of forms however, which is a somewhat more technical job. The forms should extend well below the frost line. They can be constructed of 1 x 6 scrap lumber, held together by any length lath or 1 x 2 that is handy. Wire screening is inserted in the concrete to add strength and prevent bubbling or cracking. Such a reinforced concrete wall can be much thinner than either a dry wall or a masonry wall. The inner surface of the concrete wall should be sealed by using a waterproofing compound or tar paper.

The top of every wall, whether concrete, dry wall, or masonry, needs protection. This is afforded by using broad, flat stones as capstones to the wall. These can be slate or flat stones acquired in the course of collecting the material for the wall.

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