Landscape Retaining Walls in Burnaby

Landscape retaining walls serve a dual purpose: they hold soil in place and shape the outdoor space at the same time. Unlike purely structural walls engineered for maximum load capacity, landscape retaining walls often prioritize aesthetics, proportionality, and integration with surrounding plantings and hardscape.

In Burnaby and across the Lower Mainland, landscape retaining walls are most commonly needed to create level planting beds on sloped lots, define the edge between lawn areas at different grades, build raised vegetable or ornamental garden beds, and create terraced outdoor entertainment areas.

We build landscape retaining walls in block, stone, and brick, and we approach them with as much attention to visual proportion and finish as to structural integrity. A landscape wall that holds but looks awkward or out of scale with its setting hasn't really done its job.

Garden and Planting Walls

The most common landscape retaining wall request we get is for a wall that carves out a flat planting bed from a sloped garden. The typical scenario: a sloped backyard where the homeowner wants to create one or more level areas for lawn, planting beds, or seating.

For these applications, we help with the grading plan — determining the number of terraces, their height, and the materials that will work with the rest of the garden. A single tall wall at the back of a garden creates a harsh, vertical backdrop. Two or three lower terraced walls with planting between them creates a much more livable and visually interesting space.

Material selection for garden walls should consider the surrounding landscape. Natural stone works naturally in Pacific Northwest garden settings. Concrete block can look excellent when faced with stone veneer or planted at the base with trailing plants.

We also design the planting scheme around the walls we build, either directly or in coordination with a landscape designer.

Raised Planting Beds

Raised planting beds with structural retaining walls on one or more sides are increasingly popular in Burnaby, where property sizes often mean limited flat ground for gardening. A raised bed built with proper drainage and high-quality growing media can produce far more food or flowers per square metre than in-ground planting on BC's often shallow or clay-heavy soils.

For raised beds, drainage is even more important than for conventional retaining walls — the growing medium inside the bed must drain freely, and the wall must not impede that drainage. We design raised bed walls with gravel at the base, excellent drainage, and appropriate height for the intended planting (most vegetables need 300–600mm of good growing medium depth).

Wall height for raised beds is typically low enough to avoid permit requirements. Natural stone and concrete block are the materials we use. For vegetable beds, stone or block keeps the growing area clear of treated wood.

Terrace Walls for Outdoor Living

Creating level outdoor living areas on a sloped Burnaby lot often requires significant regrading and retaining wall construction. A sloped backyard that's 2m lower at the back than the house level might be transformed into two or three distinct terraced levels — a patio off the house, a level lawn area, and a garden/planting terrace at the back.

This scope of work involves careful grading design to make the most efficient use of the grade change, determine whether cut or fill is more practical for each level, and coordinate the wall construction with any drainage or utility work in the area.

We provide terrace designs as part of the quoting process for projects of this scope, with attention to livability, proportion, and the practical question of how the levels connect to each other (steps, ramps).