5 Advantages of Choosing Bricks for Your New Garden Retaining Wall
Even the most humble garden can be turned into a lush paradise of greenery with judicious use of landscaping, but trying to landscape and maintain a garden with significant slopes and changes in elevation can be challenging. Installing a retaining wall to create tier levels of flat earth can be a great way to make your garden easier to handle, providing large areas of level ground for lawns, flowerbeds, patios and decks.
However, any good retaining wall is made out of materials that are up to the task of holding tons of raised earth in check, and traditional timber retaining walls often fall short. Brick retaining walls are a far more robust and long-lasting solution, and have a number of advantages over retaining walls made of timber, concrete and other materials.
Strength
As you can imagine, retaining walls made from good-quality bricks and assembled by professional bricklayers can be enormously strong, and they are capable of retaining the weight of hundreds of tons of earth without shifting, buckling or collapsing entirely. This makes bricks a particularly useful choice for gardens with significant elevation changes, as brick retaining walls can be built to significant heights without compromising on structural strength.
Durability
Brick retaining walls are also built to last, and can last for many years with minimal maintenance and repairs required. They will not fall victim to encroaching rot like timber retaining walls, and tend to be more resistant to earth tremors and easier to repair than poured concrete walls.
Versatile designs
Skilled bricklayers are not limited to creating arrow-straight retaining walls, and can create walls with curves and contours that can be built around immovable obstacles (such as large trees). The ability to create curved retaining walls can also make your new retaining wall look more distinctive and less utilitarian, and looks particularly good when used in gardens with modern styling.
Choice of brick colour
You can also add to the distinctiveness of your new retaining wall by choosing distinctive bricks. Brick retaining walls do not have to be made from regular red house bricks, and a variety of colours and shades are available, from muted greys to vibrant yellows and golds.
Termiteproof
Termites are another problem commonly encountered by owners of timber retaining walls, and even a small termite colony can damage and weaken a timber wall to the point where it loses all structural integrity and collapses. Brick retaining walls are completely immune to the attentions of termites and other wood-boring insects.
To learn more about your options, contact local bricklaying services.