Landscaping Companies Suggest These Beautiful Masonry Options for Activity-Focused Backyards in Middletown, RI

Your backyard should yield some of the best opportunities for fun with friends and family. Beyond relaxation, play, and entertainment, your backyard can also be a place of personal growth, including work and exercise. Adding some masonry features can make your backyard all the more special and usable. Here’s why landscaping companies suggest these beautiful masonry options for activity-focused backyards in Middletown, RI.

Related: How a Mason Can Turn Your Inground Pool Into a Mini-Resort in Barrington RI

Retaining Walls

Most landscapes are not perfectly flat, which limits the activities that can take place in the backyard: who wants to chase balls downhill all the time, except the dog? A beautiful masonry retaining wall will reduce landscape degradation due to erosion, and significantly increase the amount of flat space available for backyard activities including a ball court, a lawn, a larger patio for entertaining, a pool to keep the kids busy all summer, or a vegetable garden.

Low retaining walls (often called seat walls or garden walls) can be used to separate landscaping from outdoor living areas, or to separate a lawn from a plant bed. Not only do walls help keep the plant beds from being trampled, they can also provide a place to sit and watch the fun of a flag football game or a game of chase.

A Fire Pit

Adding a fire feature to your outdoor living space will always be a great success. Whatever the activities you and your loved ones experience in your backyard, at some point everybody will be tired and ready to relax by the fire.

Fire pits are so well-loved by people it’s practically written in our DNA. The light and warmth given off by a fire pit can make any landscape more appealing. A fire pit could be built with stone blocks that complement the masonry on your patio. While some fire pits use wood as a fuel, others can be outfitted to use propane or natural gas. The fire pit area could be set on the main patio, or it can be located in an otherwise unused corner of the landscape. Either way, it’s a great place to simulate the fun of a campfire and cook up “camp food” like s’mores. No matter if you’ve got a fire going in the summer heat or the depth of winter, people will use it as a base for all their activities.

What about seating around the fire pit? One great option to reduce clutter - and make your patio seem bigger, to accommodate everyone’s activities - is to create a fire pit area that features high-backed masonry seat walls. This permanent seating says “this is the place to hang out” - not only is it inviting, it helps define the fire area as a place to relax and gather, not a place for raucous fun. The gorgeous stone work and the sturdiness of the seats make a welcoming environment that also helps shelter everyone seated around the fire, blocking harsh winds as well as keeping the warmth of the fire pit within the area. Your backyard will feel much more complete once high-backed seat walls are installed around a fire pit.

A Fountain

If your backyard lacks the space for a pool, a fountain can be a source of endless fun for young and old alike. A fountain has nearly endless design options that can make great use of otherwise neglected backyard spaces (such as the corners) and a fountain can be found to fit any sized backyard.

Related: 3 Ways a Mason Can Complement Historical Architecture in Portsmouth and Barrington, RI, Areas