
When used effectively i.e. in the right place for the right application, old railways sleepers can be a strong ornamental feature for creating vegetable beds or formal plants and shrub borders or even, perhaps, as the boundaries to lawns or to create terraces to make use of a sloped and otherwise unusable piece of ground.
Jane asked this question in the 'Cowboys from the wild west' thread but I feel it's appropriate that the question is asked independently of that thread as I'm sure there could be some real positive knowledge and experiences shared.
Jane said: "I need to design a retaining wall to level up a kitchen garden. This would be about 900mm high and 24m long. Is this possible with sleepers laid on their back? How often should the reinforcement tying sleepers go in? Is this the most cost effective way of retaining this or could it be done more cheaply? The wall is not going to be visible from anywhere."
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Another installation process for new green crisp edged sleepers are to install vertically, using the earths surface for retention as opposed to the standard horizontal process, when installing horizontally ensure that the same principal and block work is exercised, ie Staggered joints for maximum strength
For all vertical sleeper works make sure that what ever length exposed must be the same length embedded in the ground with staifix and RC 35 concrete
Vertical sleepers:
few people asked for raised beds from this material, phil was willing to help ( remember phil- with asparagus raised beds)
Well improved on colour, height and these days it works well in many kitchen gardens and allotments.
even few big gardens installed that lately.
David actually helped a lot toi show what can you do with recycled plastic.
I know plastic sound like a big no no but once I saw what customers did with it -I was impressed!
I think it worth using david services to show customers what can you do.
Once again Landscape juice helped me a lot, must mention working with steve and tina- was great too.
thegardensurgery.com said:
I have just priced up a job whereby we are using our normal procedure which is very similar to that documented by the Garden Surgery. However it is too expensive for the client so I am tinkering with substituting some of the 4” by 4” posts that we would normally concrete into the ground with angle irons which we would dive in with a sledge hammer and then drill holes in and screw to the back of the sleeper.
Charles - If your talking about strength and longevity I like how Steve Snedecker(? Member on here, U.S.) said that he did sleeper retaining walls.
Laid flat pinned together with 20mm steel bars with a 4'header every 8' or so into the retained earth. This header in turn has a 4' long section of sleeper bolted to it.
The strength done this way would be colossal. The whole point is that this retaining structure is being held by the weight/mass of the retained earth - Very clever :)
This is how I will construct in future. The fixings used should outlast the sleepers....
Must admit I don't like the look/sound of the angle plates, or screws! When they're rusted away the posts will do jack!
Andy Thorne said: