Loth & SonLawn Care & Landscaping
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Retaining walls on Main Line slopes.

Structural walls that hold a bank, garden and seat walls that shape a bed, and repairs to walls that have started to lean — across Lower Merion Township.

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A curved flagstone stepping-stone path set in river stone, edged with granite cobble, running through a newly planted bed with path lighting.
Stepping-stone path in river stone with a granite cobble edge, and a bed planted the same week.

How we think about it

A retaining wall is a drainage structure that happens to be made of stone. The face is the last decision, not the first. What holds it is everything behind it: a base dug down to firm soil and compacted in lifts, clean gravel backfill against the back of the wall, a perforated pipe at the bottom running out to daylight, and fabric so the soil above does not silt the gravel closed. Most people calling a retaining wall contractor are calling because the last one skipped that part. A wall does not lean because the block was wrong. It leans because the water had nowhere to go.

Main Line properties hand you slope in awkward amounts — a lawn that falls away from the back door, a drive cut into a bank, a bed that has been washing onto the walk for years. Sometimes the answer is one structural wall. Often it is two lower ones with a planted terrace between them, which moves less soil, needs less reinforcement, and looks less like an engineering solution. We grade the ground, build the wall, set the steps through it and plant what sits above and below it. One sequence, one crew, and nobody to blame for the drainage but us.

What this covers

  • Structural retaining walls

    Segmental block or natural stone, built to hold a bank that is actually moving.

  • Garden & seat walls

    Lower walls that shape a bed, take up a small grade change, or give a patio somewhere to sit.

  • Terracing a slope

    Two or three shorter walls instead of one tall one, with usable planted ground between them.

  • Drainage behind the wall

    Clean gravel backfill, filter fabric, a perforated pipe to daylight, and weeps through the face where the pipe cannot run.

  • Steps & tie-ins

    The steps through the wall, the landing at the top, and the edge where it meets the walk or the patio.

  • Repair & rebuild

    Taking down a wall that is leaning, bulging or losing its cap, and rebuilding it with the drainage it never had.

Wall height and what sits above it decide whether Lower Merion Township wants a permit. We check that before anything is dug.

Questions we get asked

  • Do landscapers build retaining walls?

    Yes, and there is an argument for having the landscape crew do it. A retaining wall is a grading decision before it is a masonry one: what it holds back, where the water behind it goes, how the ground above is shaped so runoff never reaches the top of the wall. When the crew that grades and plants above the wall is the crew that builds it, those decisions get made once. Split the job between trades and the drainage becomes the part nobody owns.

  • Does a 2-foot retaining wall need a footing?

    Usually not a poured concrete footing. Segmental block and dry-laid stone walls under a certain height are normally built on a compacted gravel base, with the first course set below finished grade, so the wall can move slightly with frost instead of cracking. Taller walls, walls holding a drive or a structure, and walls with a slope above them are a different question and can need engineering. Lower Merion Township requires a permit above a certain wall height — check with the township before you build.

  • Can a leaning wall be repaired, or does it have to come down?

    It depends on what is moving. A wall that has lost a cap course or a few face stones can be reset. A wall that is bowing in the middle, tipping out at the top or pushing its base forward has already failed behind the face, and resetting the stone puts it back where it was inside two winters. Then we take it down, fix the base and the drainage, and rebuild with the same stone where the stone is still sound.

Also

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