Retaining Walls in Applewood

Not every wall job is a cliff. It's common for a deep suburban lot to lose half a metre or so between the patio and the back fence, just enough that a table rocks, a ball rolls away and rain gathers in the bottom corner. A low wall of two or three courses, placed where the slope starts to steepen, gives you a flat terrace above it and a planting bed or lawn below.

Raised beds along the rear fence are the other common answer. They hold back the high side, give vegetables or perennials better drained soil than the heavy clay found across much of Peel, and hide the base of a tired fence. Because they're short, they can be built from the same block as a patio border, so the whole yard reads as one design instead of a set of separate projects.

Height is what decides the paperwork. Under the Ontario Building Code, a retaining wall over 1 m of exposed height becomes a designated structure needing a permit when it sits next to public property, a building entrance or a place the public can use. Low garden walls stay well clear of that. The thing to watch is the eastern side of Applewood, where lots run toward Etobicoke Creek: there, Toronto and Region Conservation Authority regulation can apply to grading even for a short wall, so we check its mapping first. Every wall still gets a compacted gravel base and clear stone behind it, because a low wall that holds water gets pushed around by frost just like a tall one.