Fieldstone Boulder Retaining Wall Build in St Paul Park

This property near St Paul Park had a real problem - a sloped side yard with a washout in the back and no good way to access the rear of the property. The homeowner needed something that would hold the grade, create a usable transition to the backyard, and actually look like it belonged there. That's where a fieldstone boulder wall comes in.

We constructed a 10-foot long wall using irregular fieldstone boulders ranging from 18 to 30 inches in diameter. The wall starts right at the home's foundation and curves outward, forming the slope used as the access path to the backyard. The taller section runs two full courses at 3.5 feet exposed height, then tapers down to a single course finishing at about 12 inches. That gradual taper is what gives it that natural, intentional look rather than feeling like something just dropped in.

Behind the wall, we backfilled with 3/4-inch clear limestone drainage rock. That's not just a filler material, it's what keeps water from building up behind the wall and pushing it out over time. Drainage is the part most people don't think about, and it's usually the reason boulder walls fail within a few years. We don't skip that step.

All the excavated material got put to work too. Instead of hauling it off-site, we used it to fill the washout in the backyard, solving two problems at once. Salvaged topsoil went on the back side of the wall, and we rough graded in front to set everything up cleanly. The seed bed you can see was covered with straw to protect it while grass establishes.

Properties with sloped yards and tricky grades are exactly the kind of work we do a lot of in Washington County. A wall like this isn't just about looks - it's doing real structural work to keep soil in place and give the homeowner a yard they can actually use.