An Adventure in Landscaping

Knollwood, the neighborhood where we live, is one of the hilliest neighborhoods in Topeka. Stacked stone retaining walls line three sides of our property. The wall on the southern side of the yard  is less than two feet. With the Neighbors wooden fence set in a couple of feet, it serves a dual purpose as a decorative planting bed. When we took ownership of our home six years ago, the back yard was completely overgrown. This wall was barely visible due to being completely covered with English ivy. Clearing off the Ivy, we discovered roots from the surrounding trees and bushes had completely destroyed the wall.

Starting at the Westernmost end of the wall, we worked together intending to simply "clean it up" a bit. Dennis worked ahead of me, removing the ivy and volunteer trees so I could re-stack the stones that had fallen. We quickly realized that a rebuild was in order. So I began pulling the rocks down and digging out the dirt behind them. Working a few feet at a time, I piled the limestone rocks on top of the bed and project went pretty quickly.


Roots had completely disintegrated many of the stones. I spent a lot of time using a hand tool to dig out the dirt. (Amelia worked diligently re-locating the worms I encountered.) Sixty years of freezing and thawing has not been kind on my poor little wall. Some of the rocks were not much more than dust. But luckily, the footer stones were still in place. I was able to straighten out the wall without having to use a guide.

A long time ago, a flower bed had been placed in front of the eastern end of the wall. Having a wall go through the middle of a flower bed is pretty odd. We decided to move the wall in front of the bed, and place our bird feeder within it.

It's amazing how much work you can get done in two days. This project only took us two Sunday afternoons to complete. The second week we discovered peony buds peeking through the dirt. I hope that I didn't' disturb them too much. This project was a lot easier than I had thought it'd be. I can't wait to do more!