Landscaping in Vinings

The terrain here is the steepest on this list. Vinings runs along the river bank and the ground behind it climbs quickly, which puts retaining walls and terracing at the center of most landscape projects rather than at the edge of them. On that kind of grade the honest answer is frequently two shorter walls rather than one tall one: less structural requirement, easier access, and the bench between them becomes planting rather than a blank face.

What holds a wall up on this ground is drainage, not mass. Clay packed straight behind a wall acts as a dam and every storm loads it, so free-draining stone backfill, a filter fabric face to keep clay fines out of the aggregate, a perforated pipe that daylights somewhere it will run under load, and a base course buried below finished grade are the parts that matter. The visible block or stone is the last five percent of the job.

The river brings its own conditions. Ground close to the water is wetter for longer after a storm and the bank itself is the most erosion-prone part of any lot here, so the planting near it does structural work rather than decorative work. Deep-rooted riparian species hold a bank in a way that turf and mulch never will, and concentrated flow arriving from a downspout or a drain outlet is what takes it apart.

Cobb County sits inside the Metro North Georgia Water Planning District along with Fulton and DeKalb, so the district requirements on new landscape irrigation systems apply here as well, and Georgia's outdoor watering window of 4 p.m. to 10 a.m. applies statewide. On terraced ground the practical consequence is cycle-and-soak run times, because a zone on a slope that applies water faster than clay can take it is irrigating the terrace below it.