Garden Wall Curved Face Retaining Blocks

Garden Wall Curved Face is the smaller of our two National Masonry retaining blocks. It dry stacks, meaning the blocks lock together without mortar, and the curved face is the reason to choose it over a flat faced block.

Why the Curved Face Matters

A curved face lets consecutive blocks sit at a slight angle to each other without opening a wedge shaped gap at the back of the joint. In practice that means you can run a wall around a garden bed, curve it into a corner or take it around a tree without cutting blocks or leaving visible gaps. On a straight run it also gives the wall a softer shadow line than a flat block does.

Colours

Three colours: Charcoal, Hawkesbury Yellow and Portstone. Hawkesbury Yellow is the warm sandstone tone and the one people pick when they are matching a wall to existing sandstone in the garden. Portstone is the mid grey brown. Charcoal is the dark grey and the usual pick on a contemporary build. Modernstone comes in the same three colours, so a Garden Wall bed and a Modernstone wall on the same site will match.

Coverage

26.3 blocks make up a square metre of wall face, and a pallet holds 120 blocks, so a pallet builds 4.56 square metres of face. Work out the face area as wall length multiplied by finished height, not by the volume of soil behind it.

Before You Build

A retaining wall holds a load, and the load depends on the height, the slope behind it, the soil type and whether anything is built or driven near the top. Wall height limits, drainage and footing requirements vary with all of those, and most councils have a height above which the wall needs engineering and approval. Get engineering advice before you build anything beyond a low garden edge. Put drainage aggregate and an ag line behind the wall whatever the height, because water pressure behind a wall is what pushes it over.

If you are facing a wall that already exists rather than building a new one, retaining wall cladding is the product you want instead.