A month ago, the area at the top of the front steps at Glen Villa looked like this.
This view shows the driveway and the parking area in front of the house. The house itself is out of the frame to the right.
Now it looks like this.
Stones in gabion baskets create a more interesting wall that better suits the architecture of the house.
We built the drystone wall that appears in the ‘before’ picture a few years after we moved into Glen Villa. We needed a wall because we had cut into the hillside to create enough space for parking, and a stone wall was an obvious choice since stone walls appear in many places at Glen Villa.
There are tall ones….
Glen Villa is built on a hillside and this wall is part of the foundation of the house. There is a terrace on top of the wall, one story higher than the ground floor room on the right of this photo.
and short ones.
This wall formed part of the foundation for a summer cottage, torn down in the late 1960s when our house was built.
There are old ones…
This low wall, now held together by a stone coping, dates from 1902 when Glen Villa Inn was built. It is the wall around the Yin/Yang.
and new ones.
This wall is part of The Aqueduct, a project finished last year.
There are walls that draw your eye, others that almost disappear, attractive walls and ones that don’t look so great. The parking wall was one of the latter. The wall needed to be repaired — stones were starting to fall off and the wall starting to bulge from the weight of the earth behind it. Worst, though, was the mismatch between the strong straight architectural lines of the house and the rough workaday character of the wall itself.
One end of the parking wall abutted a stone outcropping. An unattractive little wall was above it and a pathetic bed I used to trial plants was beside it.
Several years ago we began work on The Aqueduct, an area below the driveway that adjoins the house. This multi-purpose project took several years and involved replacing dangerous steps, changing the shape of the land and transforming a hidden stream into a major feature of the garden. It also involved building a tall stone wall. After investigating various options, we decided to build the wall using gabion baskets.
A gabion basket is simply a heavy wire container which can be filled with almost any material. You sometimes see the baskets filled with rubble along highways, holding back banks of earth. They aren’t very appealing when stones are dumped in randomly, but when the front layer of stones is carefully placed, a gabion wall has a clean neat appearance that I like very much.
Stones partially fill two of the many gabion baskets used in The Aqueduct.
When we decided to replace the drystone wall by the parking area rather than repair it, building a gabion wall like the one at The Aqueduct was an easy choice. Although it is hard to see both walls at the same time, I knew that repeating the same style would add continuity to the garden and link one area to another.
The new wall is practical — the parking area is about 2 feet wider now which means cars can make a three-point turn to back out . Because it is higher, you can see the wall from inside your car; this means you know how close to the wall you can park.
The new wall is attractive. Its clean lines suit the modernist architecture of the house much better than the old one. It suits my aesthetic much better, too.
The wall follows the slope of the hillside. As the hillside rises, the wall becomes taller.
Enlarging the parking area exposed more of the naturally beautiful rock outcropping that marks the end of the space. I wanted to integrate the gabion baskets into the curving top of that rock, to give the sense that one grew naturally from the other. Making a clean join between the two meant that the bottom side of several baskets had to be cut and shaped individually. That took time.
I haven’t yet resolved how to handle the area above and to the left of the stone outcropping. I’d like a line as clean as the line formed by the gabion baskets.
Of course, one thing leads on to another. The plantings around the stone outcrop need attention. Those around the cascade, at the other end of the wall, are crying out for a total re-think.
Blowsy plantings matched the old stone wall but do not suit the new. That burned out beige patch is newly laid sod.
The clean contemporary lines of the new gabion wall demand a crisper, more modern planting scheme. I want to reinforce the horizontal lines of the gabion wall but I don’t want to tear the cascade apart entirely. Repeating the pattern of the gabion baskets as they step up the hill near the rock outcrop offers some interesting possibilities. Adding a short section of rock-filled baskets midway up the slope, somewhere below the trees shown in the photo above, offers others. Replacing the small fuzzy-leafed plants that surround the cascade now with plants that are more strongly architectural is almost a given. But I can’t go too far in that direction — the cascade is a transition point between the contemporary lines that surround the house and the natural exuberance of the grounds beyond.
The area also needs a name.
Ideas, anyone?
Wow, Pat. The new wall really makes a huge difference! I love all the various walls about the property. A question about the gabions…did you have stone brought in the fill them? How on earth did you manage to shape them around the outcropping…that is brilliant! ~Julie
I’m delighted with the change, Julie, and am glad you like it too. We have tons of stone at the edge of old fields and were able to supply it all. The shaping of the baskets was a real work of art by the guys building the wall. I should have thought to credit them… and will do an up-date since I know they’d be pleased. How did they do it? They measured, cut, fitted, cut again and again until the join was smooth. They are really skilled, though, and good at measuring, so I only saw them cut one basket twice. Plus the metal has some flex to it, if you are strong enough.
Yes, definitely love all the clean lines! I will toss in name “parcheggio.”
I’m making a list of names, Robert. Yours makes me laugh. Good idea!
LOL and I hope at the top of that list! Have been enjoying all the latest pictures too, things are looking good!
Thanks, Robert.
An excellent transformation! I remember spending many serene hours on the little beach at Hovey looking across the brook at that property. I would be inclined to name it Serenity Park, or Serenity Walk if your guest need to walk any distance to arrive at Glen Villa.
Thank you, Alison. That little beach is quite special, isn’t it? I loved the years we spent in the summer cottage there, which my brother-in-law now owns.
All the stone walls look really wonderful. A great improvement.
This is really attractive. I’ve always like gabion walls, but in this case they are beautifully enhanced by the careful patterning of the layers of stone in the gabions. I also like the way you extended the turf to cover the top of the gabions – it’s a clean and simple finish. Nice work!
Thank you, Jane. At the Aqueduct I covered the top of the baskets with mixed sedum and I love the look there. But in the parking area I wanted something simpler and grass seemed the best choice. It is, as you say, a clean and simple finish.
I am not really a fan of “big cage” landscaping. Though I recognise its utility, it is too reminiscent of highways and other government works; the utility screams more loudly than the aesthetic, at least for me. That said, it is beautifully done – especially the blending of the grass with the top of the wall and the lovely curves in the sod and triangular bits of caged stone visible from the side at each new level – and the integration of the outcropping is masterful. It will be interesting to make a good transition from the industrial look of the cages to the natural roughness of the rocks at the cascade (looking at the photo captioned “the wall follows the slope …”)…awaiting developments with great interest!
I understand your point of view. I had a hard job convincing my husband to let me use the gabions at the Aqueduct. He likes them there and hasn’t complained about them in the parking area. Or at least not yet! Knowing that you aren’t a fan of this approach, it’s doubly satisfying that you find things to admire. Integrating the outcropping was the hardest part. I’ll definitely post on this again, whenever there is a change worth reporting.
Bravo! Love it! Re the planting, I would like to see ornamental grasses (large and small/upright and fountain) for architecture and movement, and perhaps remove a couple of the large rounds at front/bottom.
Marian, you make really helpful suggestions. Thank you. I planted a blue-toned grass that was said to be invasive (Elymus arenarius glauca) but it has scarcely survived. Something isn’t right, either in the soil or drainage so I have to sort that out before I plant anything else. Even gooseneck loosestrife barely spreads and it is very invasive in my climate.
I love the look of this new wall.
Thank you, Jean. So do I! I knew there would be a big change from the ‘before,’ but I wasn’t prepared for how big a change it is.
All those blowsy plantings look fine to me–but then, my garden style is pretty blowsy to begin with. Maybe if I saw the new and the old together I would see that it calls out for new planting. As for its name, why not call it the Entry Garden?
I’m making a list of names, Kathy, and hope to have lots of ideas to consider. The blowsy plantings — I like them, sort of, but they don’t suit the new wall. I’ll try to post a photo showing both parts but it’s hard to get a true idea without being there. The wall makes a big statement.
I wish I had something fabulous to say but I don’t think I do since I prefer loose, cottagey, woo hoo – everyone in the pool – kind of plantings. But maybe if you added some conifers with bluish needles it might highlight the blue in the stone as well as give you the structure you like. Panicum ‘Shenandoah’ would be pretty, too, and would contrast with the stiffness of the conifers. Japanese forest grass would be beautiful here, too. I think some pale pink tall phlox paniculata would be be very pretty and soft but also tall and strong. I think a big bosomy gal of a plant would be a good contrast to the more masculine shrubs.
Thanks, Tammy. I like the idea of using Panicum ‘Shenandoah’ for a couple of reasons. It has wonderful colour, my grandparents’ farm was in the Shenandoah Valley and I’m using it already in the area just across the driveway from the Cascade. I agree, some blue-toned plants will highlight the blue in the stone wall. Leymus arenarius is there now, and it is bluer than I like, plus it isn’t growing well, so I think it will find a home somewhere else. If I use masculine shrubs, I’ll be sure to add some bosomy gal plants to keep them company. Might even help the plants to reproduce.