How to Dry Stack Stone Landscape Walls

Whether you’re trying to create a strong but natural atmosphere or an aura of elegance and dignity, stone walls can play a key role in your landscaping. Many homeowners utilize dry-stacked stone walls in landscaping applications such as flowerbed edging, garden enclosures and property entrances. Dry-stacked stone walls are easy to lay and maintain since you can adjust the stones, and the entire wall shifts with the ground when it freezes and thaws. Be prepared for hard manual labor that is directly proportionate to the size of the stone wall you’re planning to lay.

Things You'll Need

• Stones
• Wooden stakes
• Hammer
• String
• Garden hose
• Shovel/spade
• Sand/gravel

Instructions

1. Select rocks for your landscape walls. According to Charles McRaven, author of “Building Stone Walls,” top rock choices for dry-stacked stone walls include sandstone and limestone. Although you can acquire your stones from a commercial vendor, such as a rock yard, picking stone from your own property can save you a significant amount of money and allows you to create a landscape wall that utilizes native fieldstone, an important consideration for many stone wall enthusiasts.

2. Stake the location for your stone landscape walls. Hammer wooden stakes into the ends and corner locations of your proposed stone walls. If your stone wall is going to be curved, use a garden hose to mark the curves and hammer additional stakes every two feet along the curves; this helps you lay the stones in a gradual curve. Run a string between stakes; the string marks the front edge of your dry-laid stone wall.

3. Prepare footers for your dry-stacked stone walls. Dig a six- to eight-inch-deep trench along the entire length of twine with a spade or shovel. Determine the width of your trench based on the height of your stone wall, allowing one inch of width for every inch of height. In other words, if your stone wall is going to be 30 inches tall, it’ll have to be at least 30 inches wide as well, in order to maximize the strength of the wall. Make sure the front edge of your footer extends to about six inches beyond the line of twine.

4. Put a layer of sand or gravel in the footer, filling it up to within one to two inches of the top. Use a hand-held level to ensure that the fill material is flat, adjusting it in the trench with your shovel when necessary.

5. Lay the stones. Lay each course of rocks completely, making sure it’s even with the marking twine before moving on to the next layer. Stagger the joints in each succeeding course to further strengthen your wall. You can also strengthen your stone landscape wall by laying a long stone (called a tie rock) perpendicular to the line of the wall every three to four feet in each layer of stone; this is a stone-wall-building strategy that works particularly well at stabilizing wide walls that have more than one row of stones in each layer.

Tips & Warnings

• Check with your city office about getting any necessary building permits before building your stone walls.

• If you’re using your dry-stack stone wall as a retaining wall, angle the wall stones slightly toward the raised soil as you build the wall; this reduces the chances of having the wall give way and collapse from the soil’s pressure.

• Exercise care when lifting stones for your walls, since they can easily strain your back or cause other injuries due to their size and weight.

References

• “Building Stone Walls"; Charles McRaven; 1998