Your house looks picture perfect, from the tops of its shingles to its bottom-most entry step. Understandably, you want your yard to look just as beautiful and grand as your home, but you have a little problem: an uneven slope. It dips and drops, suddenly, and you worry that the soil around these areas will erode over time or make it unstable for your visitors. Maintaining your yard with those unmanageable hills can prove to be difficult and expensive.
Luckily for you, you can call on Cottonwood Landscapes LLC to transform your yard with beautiful hardscaping retaining walls. Our walls are both functional and stunning, so you can make the most of your garden space.
Add A Retaining Walls To Your Backyard Oasis
Materials To Match Your Garden Style
Many homeowners install simple retaining walls to hold or retain the soil. However, you can take this necessary feature a step further and turn it into an eye-catching focal point with the right materials.
As a premium builder of landscaping and retaining walls, we understand that you want materials that complement your style. That is why we offer the following retaining wall materials:
- Boulders
- Bricks
- Segmental Blocks
- Dry Stacks
- Wood Ties
- Concrete
We use only top-quality materials to ensure that your retaining wall looks beautiful, refined, and elegant.
Surface Finishes:
Aside from the materials that you use to actually build your wall, another key component of retaining walls is the finish, which greatly affects the durability and aesthetic of the final design. Learn about some popular surface finishes for retaining walls, below:
- Stain: Perfect for any sort of interlocking materials, such as stone, brick, or concrete blocks. Water-based stains help give your wall a more complete, uniform look, and help protect it from the elements.
- Stucco: If you use some cheap or unsightly materials to build your wall, then it can be to your benefit to apply a layer of stucco over the surface, which still provides texture to your wall and a natural aesthetic of earthy tones.
- Veneer: Another great option to add to a plain or ordinary outer wall is veneer, which is a layer of thin bricks and stones that are held together by concrete. This is a more cost effective way to get the look of natural stone, but without a solid stone wall.
Landscape Inspiration For The Occasion
At Cottonwood Landscapes LLC, we understand that every home and homeowner is different. Your yard requires a special touch that only our talented designers can provide. Learn more about some of the uses that our customers commonly have for retaining walls, below:
- Segment the backyard into different terraces with varying levels of elevation. This helps organize your backyard, better, and makes it aesthetically pleasing.
- Separate your patio from the rest of the backyard with a retaining wall that puts your patio at a lower elevation from the rest of your yard, making it appear cut out.
- Create a border in your front yard by placing retaining walls between your yard and the sidewalk. This is especially great if you use climber plants to adorn your walls.
- Outline your driveway by raising your yard up on a retaining wall around the concrete of your driveway.
Elements Of Retaining Walls
A retaining wall is different from other walls that you can use in your yard, due to the uniquely engineered design that goes into building one. There are several different key components of a retaining wall that make it functional and visually stunning. Here are the important parts of any retaining wall:
- Outer Wall: The part of the wall that you actually see. This is where the beautiful materials, whether stone, wood, or concrete, are used.
- Drainage Stone: A layer of stone that goes between the outer wall and the soil of the yard around it. It prevents water from gathering up behind the wall, and eroding the stone, concrete, or wood.
- Filter Fabric: A thin layer of tough fabric that wraps around the drainage stone to prevent the soil from packing into the stone and preventing water drainage.
- Batter: The batter isn’t actually a physical piece of the wall, but is the angle at which the wall leans backward into the soil around it. Typically, it is recommended that retaining walls have a batter of 1 inch for every 1 foot tall the wall is.
- Weep Hole: A gap in the wall that should be spaced out every 6 or so feet, in order to let excess water escape from the base of the wall.
- Footing: A layer of concrete that is placed at the base of the wall for support.
- Footing Drain: A pipe through the footing that carries water out to the weep holes in the wall.
Climber Plants
One of the great benefits of having a retaining wall is the ability to add plants to the outer wall to help blend it in with the rest of your property. The key to doing this is to use climber plants, which include types of vines, ivies, and certain flowers. Here are some common types of climber plants:
- Boston Ivy
- Californian Lilac
- Potato Vine
- Hydrangeas
- Chocolate Vine
- Waterwheel
- Variegatum
See What Our Clients Say
Gordon Foote2024-11-02Dan and his professional team have completed three separate landscaping projects in 2023. We signed our next contract for two additional projects in 2025. Dan Cloward treats us like family. He does it all from design to finished job. Gordon FooteTamara Border2024-10-17Cottonwood landscaping is very good at designing your yard. They are personable. They are excited and motivated and supportive and eager to make your project magnificent call them today.Samantha Penner2024-10-11The folks at Cottonwood were awesome from start to finish. They were able to help us design something that perfectly fit how we wanted to use it, even amongst historical permitting and a lot of physical space limitations. Their workers were clean, conscientious and very friendly. They worked very quickly and their attention to detail is amazing. If we had another yard to work with, we would absolutely hire them again.Doug Darrington2024-10-10Very pleased with the results of the landscaping. All the workers were prompt and professional. Everything looks beautiful. Very proud to show our friends, family and neighbors.Renee Darata2024-08-13I hired Cottonwood Landscapes for 3 projects over 2 summers. A phenomenal job on the paver patio, the focal point of the yard. They were able to provide me with a landscaping vision that I could understand. I had bids from other companies who wanted to cut corners and use low quality materials. The plants and trees that were planted grew well. Their 6 inch steel edging is great. Drip watering in all planter beds.Donna Schell2024-06-10Amazing work. Our backyard is a beautiful place to sit in the morning.Emily Tuggle2024-04-18From the initial meeting to completing the with they were a pleasure to do business with!! They were very responsive, professional, and did an absolutely amazing job. The only way you can even tell they were here was our new patio and landscaping! They cleaned up absolutely everything- I will definitely work with them again!Richard Billings2024-02-19Built my dream waterfall and pond beyond my expectations and has taken care of our sprinkler and water system needs for years. Definitely would highly recommend!!Nathan Brock2024-02-15After wasting 18 months and a whole lot of $ with yet another chalk full of fail contractor, we finally found one leading a team that truly knows what they're doing! From the outset, Cottonwood Landscapes provided thorough and detailed estimates, set clear expectations and provided a comprehensive plan for our project. Their consistency in progress has been remarkable. Every step was well-communicated and executed in a timely fashion, ensuring no surprises or delays. The quality of their work has been truly outstanding. Each aspect of our COMPLEX project has been produced with the highest level of craftsmanship and attention to detail. This is undoubtedly a testament to their exceptionally experienced staff, who not only have developed decades of extensive knowledge through their successes, but also possess a genuine passion for what they do. They show up every day before 8:00 AM regardless of rain, snow, or freezing cold temperatures. I can happily confirm what was told to me, "They're who you call when everyone else tells you it's impossible", and "They're head and shoulders above every other contractor in Utah". Cottonwood Landscapes has been incredibly easy to work with, always accommodating our preferences and offering expert advice. Their commitment to integrity and customer satisfaction is evident in every interaction, making them a standout choice for anyone seeking top-notch landscaping or building services. If you're looking for a landscaping company that combines expertise, quality, and excellent customer service, look no further than Cottonwood Landscapes. They have exceeded my expectations in every way, and I am confident they will do the same for you. Happy to provide additional details to anyone interested.
Add Value To Your Home
There’s no question that adding a retaining wall to your home adds value to your life and your equity. Experts estimate that a Retaining Wall adds anywhere between 5-8% to your property value.