This Belgard retaining wall, with rebuilt bluestone steps and fresh plantings, went in on a corner lot in Wilmington’s Cool Spring neighborhood. City projects like this one get the same EHS crews, the same standards and the same care we bring to estate gardens and historic landscapes across the Brandywine Valley. Smaller footprint, full attention.
The Ask
The homeowner had a front yard that sloped hard toward the sidewalk on two sides, soil slumping onto the concrete and a set of front steps showing their age. They wanted a proper retaining wall, and they already knew which product they wanted: Belgard Diamond Pro. PJ Walraven ran the project from layout to final planting.
A Commercial Block on a City Street
Diamond Pro is not a garden-center block. It comes out of Belgard’s commercial line, the same system engineers specify for tall reinforced walls on commercial developments and road work. Each unit stands 8 inches tall, 18 inches wide and 12 inches deep, and weighs about 75 pounds. A rear lip locks every course to the one beneath it and sets the face back into the slope at roughly 7 degrees, so the wall leans into the soil it holds. Unreinforced, the system is rated for gravity walls up to 4 feet. On a residential frontage that is a generous margin, and the homeowner chose it for exactly that reason.
A block built for commercial loads only performs if it goes in the way the manufacturer intends. That part is installation, and it is where experience with the product matters.
How It Went In
- The base decides everything. The first course sits below grade on a compacted gravel base, leveled precisely, because every course above inherits whatever the first one gets wrong.
- Drainage behind the wall. The hollow cores and the zone behind the block are filled with clean stone, with filter fabric between that stone and the native soil so fines don’t migrate in and clog it. Water that can’t build up behind a wall can’t push it over.
- Curves and caps. The street corner turns on a radius rather than a hard angle, and a dark cap course finishes the top so the wall reads as one continuous line from the steps to the corner.
- Steps rebuilt between pillars. The lower run of the front steps was rebuilt with bluestone treads over stone risers, framed by capped Diamond Pro pillars on either side, so the walk meets the wall cleanly at the sidewalk.
- Planting to finish. With the grade held, the new beds were planted with ferns and ornamental grasses, set with accent boulders and topped with fresh mulch.
What a City Job Asks For
Working a city frontage brings its own conditions. Material and equipment stage on a public sidewalk that neighbors still need to use. A mature street tree stood a few feet from the wall line and had to be worked around with care. Every pallet comes off a truck parked on a residential street. None of that changes how the wall is built. It changes how carefully the site is run while it gets built.
The neighbor next door put it honestly: a week of noise and a narrowed sidewalk was not his favorite stretch. Then he looked at the finished frontage and said it looks amazing. On a city block, that is a fair trade.
Every block on this project was set by EHS crews. We don’t subcontract hardscape on an estate, and we don’t subcontract it on a corner lot.
Smaller Projects Are Welcome
If you live in Cool Spring or anywhere else in Wilmington, West Chester or anywhere across New Castle and Chester counties, and you have a slope that needs holding, a walkway or front steps that need replacing or beds that could use new planting, the EHS team would be glad to come see the property. Not every project needs to be an estate to deserve the same care.
We Do The Work. You Do The Enjoyment.
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