3 Landscape Design Ideas to Complement a Retaining Wall in the Middletown and Chester, NY Areas

Retaining walls can serve multiple functions in your Middletown and Chester, NY Areas landscape design. From adding more seating around the outdoor fireplace to making your outdoor dining feel separate from the outdoor kitchen area, retaining walls can be perfect additions to many outdoor living spaces. Here are some ideas to consider as you plan your next landscape feature addition.

Related: Add More Function to Your Retaining Wall With Steps in the Middletown and Chester, NY Areas

A Patio with a Retaining Wall

When you have neighbors close to your house and backyard, the proximity can feel uncomfortable when you decide to eat outdoors. This can be the perfect reason to add a retaining wall to your patio space.

A retaining wall can create a pleasing barrier that continues your landscape aesthetic. You can choose a stacked stone, wall stone, or custom retaining wall design to add beauty and increased privacy.

Something to consider as you work with a landscape professional to ensure the retaining wall will look the way you envision is to have them add planting space to the wall top. An advantage this can provide is the opportunity to plant small evergreens there for a living screen that adds bold beauty with additional screening.

A Fire Feature with a Retaining Wall

Imagine an outdoor fireplace with a crackling fire and a gorgeous stone façade flanked by retaining walls on each side of the structure. With a hollow nook in the lower wall for dry firewood and a space on the opposite side with a door where you can store extra throws and pillows, adding a retaining wall to an outdoor fire feature can provide storage for whatever you need.

Since most retaining walls have flat stone surfaces on the wall top, this area can offer your guests more seating than just a pair of couches and armchairs. Having more seating can be essential when you want to invite more guests than usual and you worry about having seating for everyone.

When the wall top is wider than normal, you can also let it double as serving space for drinks and snacks so people can have more than one place to grab what you are serving.

An Outdoor Dining Room with a Retaining Wall

An outdoor dining room can be where you love to host on the weekends since there is no hurry to the meal or for guests to go home. Eating beneath the stars certainly has a different atmosphere than indoor dining and you will want to take as much advantage of the wonderful, slow evenings as possible.

Encircling your outdoor dining space can let you use the long table as a buffet for informal meals and the retaining wall can be informal seating for guests. The retaining wall can serve another function which is to increase the distinction between the dining area and the rest of the patio.

If privacy is an issue, a retaining wall can increase the coziness of the outdoor dining area and shield the activity from the view of neighbors that you don’t want to have a direct line of sight to the gathering.

A landscape professional can help you decide the perfect place to add a stone retaining wall to make your backyard the place you anticipate coming home to relax or invite friends to visit.

Related: The Benefits of a Retaining Wall in a Sloped Backyard in Chester and Middletown, NY Areas