This is the question as regards the heavy blocks we use in gardens for a variety of purposes, from edging and creating sections to constructing retaining walls (walls bearing the weight of large amounts of soil, creating raised beds and often used to add visual interest through having different levels. A completely flat garden may be easy to work on from one point of view, but it does mean a lot of bending, crouching and kneeling, which can be a challenge for anyone with mobility issues and affects almost everyone as they get older. The knees and hips that can see a young person through a summer job picking potatoes or even strawberries won’t entertain the same sort of contorted indignities 30 or 40 years later.
Functionality is an important consideration. Ergonomics is a concept that was once confined to interiors but is now perfectly appropriate to consider when designing a garden. Ergonomics is the science of laying things out, so they are easy to work in. It’s the common-sense element of design that means the cupboard where you keep the tea and coffee is close to the kettle, and the food preparation takes place near the cooker. It dictates that those cupboards are not so high that you can’t reach what you want to.
In the garden, it means being able to tend to the roses comfortably or pick a lettuce and some spring onions without reaching for the knee pads. That is one reason for having a garden designed with attention to three dimensions rather than the obvious two, and it leads directly to the choice between timber and concrete.
Are sleepers good for retaining walls? The answer is a resounding yes. It is possible to create a retaining wall through the use of blocks, but sleepers have the natural advantages of serious weight and a low centre of gravity. Timber and concrete sleepers don’t fall over.
As for which is better, there are a number of factors to consider, and while practical issues should perhaps be the first on the list, they are often preceded by appearance: the average homeowner thinking of having raised beds or a retaining wall will have in their mind’s eye a certain image. With gardens by nature being rustic, the material performing the muscle work may well be wood. It’s a natural match. And there’s nothing wrong with it at all. Except maybe one thing. Wood is affected by the weather, by temperatures and moisture levels. It can warp. It can crack. Eventually it rots.
Concrete? It’s not bothered by all that. Drop another concrete sleeper on it from a great height and one of them might suffer a little damage, but in the normal course of events it is going to be the same in 50 years as it is today.
With wooden sleepers there has to be maintenance; you’ve got to keep an eye on them and help them accordingly. With concrete, you might want to clean them with a pressure washer or something now and then, but that’s all.
How Big Are Sleepers?
In their original role as railway sleepers, there was a standard size, because railway tracks are one size only, but for gardening purposes, the concrete sleepers come in a variety of sizes. They probably have concrete sleeper pavers too. You can pick the sleepers you need, and some you may even be able to load into your pickup, take home and install yourself, with some suitably muscular help.
More likely, though, the sort of behemoths you need will have to be ordered through and delivered and installed by a specialist firm that has not only the equipment needed to heave these things around, but the skilled and experienced staff to do the job. Even landscape gardeners have their limits.
Talking of professional gardeners, you may well need one to translate your ideas into reality, because many a great idea on paper proves to be impractical when it comes down to it, and you don’t want to lumber yourself with enormous objects that you can’t ultimately use.
A gardener with the experience of this type of project will also have an opinion on issues such as timber vs block retaining walls and a poured concrete retaining wall vs block. In many cases, while block may be a customer’s initial idea, the sheer weight of soil involved may make such a wall unsuitable. It’s all about safety in the end. And talking of safety…
Have You thought About Australian Standards Regarding Your Project?
This is another thing many people don’t realise can affect their plans. Standards Australia has regulations regarding garden safety and the use of appropriate materials is high on the list. Once you look into this, you may discover a number of considerations you were unaware of. Drainage, for instance. A build-up of water in the soil behind your retaining wall can make it much heavier – and that can affect its ability to do the job.
What Type of Sleepers Are Best?
Wood or concrete: the choice is yours. Given professional help in making sure you get materials that can deal with the weight, your choice will be narrowed down a little, but you will still have options. Then it becomes more a question of personal preference. So, we’re back to that mental picture you have of how your patch is going to look.
But there is another factor: cost
The English language is full of nuggets of advice. Buy cheap and buy twice. You get what you pay for. All those sorts of adages. In the case of sleepers, wooden ones can be cheaper than concrete, but there are variations within the wood category too. Treated pine may be lovely to look at, but it’s not going to last as long as an exotic hardwood. And no wood is going to last as long as concrete. As we saw earlier, wood is vulnerable. Yes, it can do a great job for you for maybe 25 years, but is that long enough in the great scheme of things? Do you want to have to consider maintenance?
Maybe it would be better to have a good look at how concrete can be styled, because the concrete manufacturers are well aware of the image problem their products have had in the past, and they have found ways of making it look better, more natural and less uniform. You have seen how concrete driveways have developed since the days of the utilitarian grey stuff. The same can be done with sleepers, with fencing and with other garden applications.
That is why concrete in being used in so many applications nowadays. In fact, once you start becoming aware of concrete, you may be surprised at how much of it there is all around you. It’s in public buildings and public parks. Skyscrapers would never have existed without it. Many a bridge that takes people safely across rivers and ravines is made largely of concrete. We don’t notice these things because they are unexceptional. Functional, not bad looking, perhaps even very attractive.
But above all, concrete just sits there and does its job, and that is what you need in a garden. You could even use it for the weightbearing structure and face it with stone or trim it with wooden planks. Or you could make sure your concrete sleepers are good looking enough in the first place to stand proudly as an integral part of your garden.
