I'm thinking of using gabions

Firstly thanks to everyone for the warm welcome yesterday.

Now down to business.....

My back garden although small (10m long by 7.5m wide) slopes away from the house. I've decided to step it down making a 3m x 6m patio at the top with a raised bed at each end then cutting out the full width of the garden and then levelling out the bottom part where I want to put more raised beds for veg growing and a 10'x12' shed and another small patio area.

The retaining wall only has to be about 1m high at most and I know the obvious choice of material would be brick, but of course that would mean laying foundations and either struggling to build it myself or paying a bricky; either way it would be pricey and time consuming.

I really liked the idea of using railway sleepers for both the wall and the raised beds. However, upon pricing up the sleepers I soon found that the cost for the wall alone is really prohibitive. This is because I wanted to use new sleepers and not the old used ones, as from what i've read they can leach creasote, tar and oil and smell, particularly in the summer, which is not good if you want to sit on them and especially if you want to grow veg in the raised beds.

So after surfing the web a whlie I think i've found a solution; gabions. Metal cages offering just the size I require (1m high x2m wide x.5m deep) that can be filled with any sort of material. Also to keep the cost down the back two thirds of the gabion can be filled with ordinary rubble leaving the front third (which is the bit which will be on show) to be filled with a stone, slate, pebble of my choice. One other nice touch is like an old dry stone wall, pockets of wall flowers can be inserted at random.

No special foundations are required as long as the earth they sit on is flat as the weight of the filled cage will not only keep them in place but hold back the dirt bank behind them.

So has anyone had any experience with using gabions and are there any pitfalls I should look out for? Better still, is it an idea you think I should run with?

Thanks

 

I would sit them on a concrete foundation or at the very least compacted type one, otherwise if youve a soft spot then theyl sink.

Personaly I use normal A1 sleapers for this sort of job and line them with membrane to stop leaching, If the budget allows then Azobe West african sleapers, these are unntreated but expensive at £21 plus vat each.