This North Oaks home was nestled between huge old trees which we needed to work carefully around to achieve a complete backyard makeover. Once again, the minimal footing requirements of our cor-ten wall systems allowed the home owner to keep their trees while making significant changes to the grading.

The walkout basement patio needed a single step down into the yard, which was tied in to a set of stairs from the upper patio. While the taller walls required pier footings, most of the edging and stair risers were designed as freestanding modules set on compacted aggregate bases and bolted together for perfectly straight and plumb transitions stretching over 75’ in some cases.

Up against the hard deadline of frost imposed by our Minnesota climate, we worked hard to prefabricate this wall system in modules which could be carried into place and welded together on site, minimizing disruption to the rest of the landscaping crew.

We installed the larger walls and stair modules to footings, and since the ground had already started to freeze, the edging and stair modules were delivered and staged for the landscaping crew to bolt together once they had laid the aggregate base. We circled back as a courtesy in the spring to make sure everything fit together like a glove and while several walls with footings were located 50+ feet away from each other, the edging between them slid into place with paper thin seams without any need for modifications. That kind of precision in a landscape is probably overkill, but it’s really fun to achieve.