Brick garden wall builders

Garden walls built to last

A brick garden wall looks simple, but the ones that last have three things in common: a proper concrete footing, a brick suited to being exposed on both sides, and a coping that keeps rain out of the top. Garden and boundary walls are the first item on our bricklaying service, and we build them in the same way as the walls of a house.

We build boundary walls along the front and side of a property, low walls around patios and lawns, brick pillars for gates and fencing panels, curved walls and feature walls, and raised brick beds for planting.

Brick pillars and raised beds

Brick pillars carry gates or break up a long run of fencing. Gate pillars need a deeper footing and often a steel core, because a swinging gate puts a lot of leverage on them. Raised beds are low walls with soil behind them, so they need weep holes or drainage to stop water building up, and a lining to keep soil off the inside face.

Cracks and garden wall repair

A crack in a brick wall usually tells you something. Diagonal cracks that step through the joints often point to movement in the footing, from tree roots, a leaking drain or a wall built with no footing at all. Vertical cracks in a long wall are often thermal movement in a wall built without movement joints. A wall that is leaning has usually lost its footing, or is holding back soil it was never designed to retain.

Some walls can be repaired by taking down and rebuilding the damaged section on a new footing and stitching it into the sound brickwork. Others are leaning far enough that rebuilding is safer. Our guide to diagonal cracks in brickwork explains how to read them.

Choosing brick and coping

A free-standing garden wall is wet on both faces and along the top, so it needs a brick rated for that exposure. Frost-resistant facing bricks last; soft internal-grade bricks crumble within a few winters. A coping or brick-on-edge capping with a damp-proof course beneath it stops water running down into the wall, and a drip on the coping keeps the face cleaner. Matching an existing house brick, or picking a contrasting one for a feature wall, is part of the planning at the start of the job.

Planning permission for garden walls

Under permitted development, a new wall or fence is generally limited to 1 metre high next to a road used by vehicles and 2 metres elsewhere. Conservation areas, listed buildings and planning conditions on newer estates can tighten that, and demolishing a wall in a conservation area can need consent.