What Is Hardscaping? 5 Projects St. Louis Homeowners Plan First

Hardscaping is the built part of your yard, like patios, retaining walls, walkways, fire pits and the drainage under them. Landscaping is the living part, the lawn, trees, shrubs and beds, and in St. Louis the hardscape gets planned first because it decides where the water goes.

Fall is a good time to plan both. A season of storms and cookouts has shown you where water sits and where the yard falls short. Below are five projects worth planning now and the order we’d build them in, and most plans start with yard drainage installation before anything goes on top.

Key Takeaways

• Write down or photograph where water sits after the next few hard rains, while it’s still fresh.
• If water sits in the yard or against the house, fix the drainage before anything is built on top of it.
• If a slope is washing out or an old wall is leaning, the retaining wall comes next.
• Size a new or bigger patio by setting your furniture out on the lawn first.
• Plan a fire pit with the patio, not after it, so the base is dug once.
• Use the fall and winter to settle the plan and a fixed price, so next spring’s build isn’t decided in a rush.

What Is the Difference Between Hardscaping and Landscaping?

Hardscaping is the built part of a yard, made of stone, block, pavers, gravel and pipe. Landscaping is the living part, which means the lawn, trees, shrubs and beds.

In St. Louis the two depend on each other. A patio set in clay that holds water can heave, and a new bed planted where runoff crosses the yard can wash out. That’s why we plan them together.

The hardscape decides where water goes, and the plants decide how the yard looks and feels. If you only have budget for one this year, fix the water and the slope first, because plants can wait a season. A wall that’s moving can’t.

Why Plan Hardscaping in the Fall?

Fall is a good time to plan hardscaping because a full season of rain, heat and backyard use has shown you what is and isn’t working. Maybe water collects beside the patio every time it rains, the slope by the back fence keeps losing soil, or the patio felt too small every time people came over. You might also have three or four ideas for the backyard and no clear sense of which should come first.

Planning now lets you look at the whole property while those problems are still fresh. A list of puddles and washouts written in October is more accurate than one pieced together from memory in March. It also leaves the winter to settle the design, the price and any permit your city requires, so the work isn’t planned in a rush once spring rain starts.

Around St. Louis, drainage, grade and soil often decide what can be built. In our experience, the clay soil in many St. Louis County yards holds water, so heavy rain runs across the surface instead of soaking in. A patio or wall planned without knowing where that water goes can end up sitting right in its path. Here are five projects worth looking at this fall.

1. Build or Expand a Paver Patio

A paver patio is the project to plan when the ground is fairly level and the problem is space, not age. A patio sized for a table and four chairs gets crowded once you add a grill, a bigger dining table, a fire pit or a second seating area, and people end up stepping into the grass to get around.

Before you choose pavers, decide what has to fit on the patio and how people will move across it. A dining table needs room for chairs to pull back, a fire pit needs a clear walk around the seating, and a patio that connects two doors needs that path kept open. Set your furniture out on the lawn, or mark the corners with stakes and string, and live with it for a few days. It’s the same layout check we do before pricing any of the paver patios we build across St. Louis County.

For an existing patio, an expansion can make more sense than starting over. If the old pavers sit flat and haven’t sunk, new pavers can often be added along one side, with a border that ties old and new together. If the old patio rocks underfoot, has settled or holds puddles, the base under it is the problem, and building onto it carries that problem into the new section.

Drainage has to be planned at the same time. The finished surface should pitch away from the house so rain runs off instead of collecting by the back door, and the new edge shouldn’t create a low spot in the lawn. On a patio expansion in Wildwood, rain was already standing where the homeowners wanted to build, so we set drain boxes first and then laid the new pavers with a charcoal border marking the added section.

A patio is the wrong first project when the yard drops off a few feet past the back door. In that case the slope needs a wall before there’s flat ground to build on.

See Related Work

2. Use a Retaining Wall to Make a Sloped Yard More Usable

A retaining wall is worth planning when the slope itself is the problem. That can mean soil washing downhill in every storm, an old railroad-tie or block wall starting to lean or separate, or a hill too steep to mow, let alone use. A wall holds the high ground in place so the area behind or below it can be leveled.

We see homeowners come to the retaining walls we build on St. Louis slopes from both directions. Some want to stop erosion or replace a wall that’s failing. Others want more flat yard for a patio, a garden, steps or a play area, and find out the slope has to be held back first.

Either way, the wall can’t be planned separately from the water around it. Water that builds up behind a wall pushes on it every time it rains, and clay drains slowly, so that water stays longer. Every winter, freeze-thaw cycles add more force wherever the soil stays wet. That’s why we build drainage into the wall from the first course, with a perforated drain pipe at the base, clean gravel behind the block instead of clay, and a place for that water to empty.

If a patio will sit above or below the wall later, plan the two together. The wall’s height and position decide how much flat area you get, and a patio built first can block the access a crew needs to dig the wall’s base. Steps built into the wall can connect the two levels so the lower yard stays easy to reach.

A wall isn’t always the answer. If the slope is gentle and the only problem is water running across it, regrading or a drain may fix it for less. Taller walls can also need a permit or an engineer’s design depending on your city, so check with your city’s permit office before you settle on a height.

We’re a Keystone Authorized Contractor, so the walls we build use the right block and the install knowledge behind it, from base prep and drainage to reinforcement on taller walls. Our crew has 25 years of combined experience on St. Louis clay, and our workmanship warranty covers 3 years.

See Related Work

3. Correct Drainage Problems Before They Affect More of the Yard

Drainage is the project to fix before the others, because a patio, wall or walkway built on top of a water problem inherits it. Fall is a good time to plan it while this year’s storms are still fresh.

Think back over the heavy rains, and note where water collected, whether a downspout emptied into a problem spot, whether runoff crossed the patio, and whether water stood beside the foundation, a pavilion or a retaining wall. Photos or a short video taken during the next hard rain are even better. Those notes point to the fix, because each problem has a different one:

• A catch basin or drain box collects surface water at a low point in the yard and sends it away through buried pipe.
• Buried downspouts carry roof water underground instead of releasing it beside the foundation.
• A French drain, a gravel-filled trench with perforated pipe in it, picks up water moving through the soil along a foundation or a wet strip of lawn.
• Regrading reshapes the ground so it slopes away from the house and water stops pooling in the same spot.

Often the answer is a combination. On a backyard in Kirkwood, runoff kept collecting along the back fence and washing the soil away after every rain. We set a drain box at the low point of the Kirkwood yard, ran buried PVC pipe toward the front yard, built a low block wall with caps along the fence and rebuilt the grade behind it, instead of treating the erosion and the drainage as two separate problems.

If you’re already replacing a patio or rebuilding a wall, decide how water will move through the finished space before construction starts. A drain line is easy to run through an open excavation and hard to add under finished pavers. That planning is where every one of the drainage systems we install around St. Louis starts.

4. Create a Patio Around a Fire Pit or Gathering Area

A fire pit area works best when you plan the seating first and build the patio around it. The fire pit itself is small, but it changes how much patio you need, so start with the gathering area instead of looking for an empty corner after the patio is built.

Decide how many people you usually want to seat, whether the seating will be a built-in seat wall or movable chairs, and how people will get in and out without squeezing past someone’s knees. A built-in fire pit can be the center of its own seating area. On a larger patio, keep the fire area apart from the dining table and grill so smoke and sparks stay away from the food and the house.

Fall is when you’ll notice whether the layout works. Cool evenings are when the fire pit gets used, so it’s easy to see where you’d want to sit, how exposed that part of the yard feels to wind and neighbors, and whether the current patio gives everyone enough room.

If a fire pit is part of the plan, price the fire pit installation with the patio rather than as a later add-on. The pit’s base and the paver base can be dug and compacted at the same time, and the pavers get cut around the pit once instead of torn up later. Check your city’s rules on open burning and how far a fire pit has to sit from the house before you pick the spot.

A built-in pit isn’t for everyone. If you’d like to move the fire around, or you might put a hot tub where the seating would go, a portable steel fire pit on a paver patio gives you the same evenings without locking in the spot.

5. Design the Landscape and Hardscape Together

Designing the landscape and hardscape together means you don’t have to build the whole backyard at once, but the first pieces still fit what comes later. A patio built this year should leave room for a future outdoor kitchen, lighting, planting beds or a wall. Running conduit for lights under the pavers, for example, is much easier before they go down than after.

The same goes when the first job is fixing a problem. A drain line run through the middle of a future patio, or a downspout pipe that empties right where a planting bed will go, may have to be dug up later. A plan for the whole property lets the work be split into sensible phases.

The University of Missouri Extension’s landscape planning guide makes the same point. It says a site analysis “should include a check of soil drainage and storm runoff.” In practice that means walking the yard after a hard rain, marking low spots and steep slopes, and putting them on the plan before choosing where the patio or the beds go.

One common order is drainage and grading first, then the patio or wall, then plantings, lighting and smaller features in a later season. Each phase sits on ground that’s already been fixed and has been through a few storms. That’s how we approach landscape design in St. Louis, with the stone and the plants on one plan.

Which Hardscaping Project Should Come First?

Start with the problem that affects everything else, which is usually water. If you have several projects in mind, this is the order we’d usually build them in.

Plantings, lighting and fire features are the easiest pieces to push to a later year, so they’re the ones to trim if the budget runs short. Drainage and grade are the ones not to skip. On St. Louis properties we check the grade, the soil and where water runs during the free on-site assessment, because they decide whether you need a French drain, a catch basin or regrading before the patio goes in.