Does using one stone for all of your hardscape projects interest you? How about using one stone for landscape retaining walls, straight walls, serpentine walls, square corners, and capstone? What if you could use the same stone to build beautiful antique English looking steps, patio barriers, stone fence finals and post for rail fence, bbq spits, tetra ponds, paver edging and garden borders?

All this can be done with the unique landscape stones that utilize design ideas going beyond the single-faced, lip-setback type stones. Look for stones that have the charteristic trapezoidal shape but utilize a visual setback instead of a lip. These unique stones have two faces as well as one smooth surface that can be used for the cap layer in your projects.

These flat, double-split-face, trapezoidal stones offer even more. Lip type stones are not designed for tumbling because the lips will break off. The flat stones can be tumbled to give two natural looking stone faces on each stone without destroying the visual set back grooves. These stones give both split face and natural stone faces from one stone idea.

How does a flat stone with visual set back work? Utilizing grooves on the top and sides of each stone the installer can easily align specific grooves to develop a set back when building a retaining wall. This visual groove alignment replaces the need for a lip as a setback measurement and eliminates the problems with serpentine walls ‘ setback. To maintain a consistent setback with lip stones in a serpentine wall, the lip-setback must be hammered off the stones. Flat stones can be slid forward or backward in serpentine walls to keep the set back just right.

Some sales personnel might suggest that lips are structurally critical to landscape retaining walls. This is misleading. Concrete weighs about 140 pounds per cubic foot. This weight provides significant friction between the layers of stones in a properly constructed landscape retaining wall allowing individual stones to remain in place. Many of the large commercial stone retaining wall systems do not utilize lips for structural strength. These large stones are flat on both top and bottom, yet they are used in walls where stability is the major concern.

The flat, double-face stones also allow for "bump out" layers and individual "shadow box" stones in a retaining wall. A "bump out" is developed by setting a layer of stones forward 5/8 of an inch. The next layer up continues the normal set back giving a unique "bump out" layer. This same effect can be used on the cap layer to give it a distinctive overhang look that lip type stones cannot do. Setting individual stones in random layers (forward or backward 5/8 of an inch) develops a "shadow box" appearance. Using the "shadow box" effect with tumbled stones will give your retaining wall the look of randomly placed natural stones.

The reversibility of a flat, trapezoidal stone allows it to be used in projects other than landscape retaining walls. Free standing stone fences and short patio barrier walls can be built giving a split face appearance on both sides. A specific groove is used for building walls straight up as required in the construction of these projects.

Antique English looking steps can also be built using flat double-faced stones. Again, utilizing the reversibility of the stones, a solid step surface can be constructed. Using paver grade adhesive to bond the stones together and dry sand to fill seams, steps of 4 inch or 8 inch rise can be built.

Varying the depth of the retaining wall stones produces a decorative look to a standard retaining wall. Staggering the layers as little as 5/8 of an inch can set the project apart from others.

Using stone for all your hardscape projects is financially and environmentally wise. Using wood for retaining walls, garden edge and other soil contact projects presents two problems that permanent and environmentally safe stone construction avoids. First, wood decays and needs to be replaced to keep its appearance and structural integrity. The cost of tearing out and replacing wood will quickly make it more expensive than building with stone.

Secondly, wood used in landscape projects is generally railroad ties or CCA treated timbers. Railroad ties are often soaked with asphaltic-based products that nobody wants to work with on a hot summer day.

Worse yet is CCA treated wood. CCA stands for Cupric Chromate Arsenate. These are radicals of three dangerous heavy metals. The material safety data sheets for CCA treated wood states that neither food or feed should come in contact with the CCA treated wood. (Material safety data sheets can be obtained from lumberyards that sell CCA treated wood.)

Though using stone to build your projects may be initially more costly, over time the cost will be less and the project will allow you to have an environmentally safe landscape. Railroad ties and CCA treated wood are both environmentally unsafe.

Remember, when using manufactured stones to build your projects, every stone you pick up is the correct stone for whatever you are doing. "One stone does it all." There is no searching for the size or shape of stone to fit the next spot. This eleminates a time consuming and costly aspect of multi-stone systems and natural stones. The benefit of using single stone systems is that finished projects look like they were built with expensive multi-stone systems, yet they are cheaper and easier to use than either natural stones or multi-stone systems.

Paul Adam holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering and a Masters Degree in Business Administraction. He is President of PYZIQUE Wall Systems, INC. and VyKing Wall Systems, LLC.