Thursday 24 January 2013

Great Gabions!



At Devoran Metals we don’t just supply our high quality gabions in the South West, we send them nationwide and we have received some great feedback and project updates from our customers. We never fail to be impressed by our customers’ ability to transform an area with our gabions combined with their imagination.



An example of this can be seen in the following picture taken by our customer Glynis of her new patio, featuring gabion seating which also doubles as a low retaining wall supporting a number of terraced planting beds. When her new patio was put in, the local crazy paving stone from the old patio was kept and recycled to fill the gabion baskets and gave the whole feature a really smart look, as well as saving on the cost of filling them and reducing waste.





 This gabion wall was created by Jacqueline who needed to replace a crumbling dry stone wall that retained a high bank next to the house. Again, she has recycled the old stone that was taken from the crumbling wall to fill the gabions. Jacqueline said to us it is ‘a great example of what an inexperienced builder can do’.



This impressive gabion feature wall is retaining a large embankment where a new build house was built into the side of a hill. It looks really smart and also provides an effective solution as an alternative to a reinforced concrete wall.



Here you can see where a stream was scouring away the end of a customer’s garden, so they used gabion baskets built on a base of gabion mattresses for stability, to stop further erosion to the garden and therefore enabling the client to regain the use of their back garden. Gabions and gabion mattresses are a great solution in this kind of situation and they are frequently used to construct flood defences due to their inherent strength and versatility.  



This fabulous garden patio seating shows our gabions in a new light! They don’t just look great when built up to form a wall; they can be a practical and attractive addition to any garden. Here they have been filled with round stones and topped with wood to form a bench and a seat, mixing the contemporary with a very natural feel. Our range of smaller garden gabions is ideal for this kind of project.



When designing your garden with gabions, the only limit is your own imagination. We have seen some wonderful examples of gabion use in the garden, from fire pits to fence posts, planters to patio seats. You don’t have to use stone to fill them either. If you are planning on using them as a decorative feature, why not try logs, chimney pots, glass bottles, or even shells? When filled with logs, twigs, canes and so on, they provide a home for valuable garden critters. You could even plant herbs or grasses in the gabions and create a ‘living wall’.



If filling your gabions with stone, remember you need stone at least 100mm as the gabion mesh is 75mm x 75mm. The general rule is to allow 1.6 tonnes of stone per m³, although allow for some variance depending on how tightly you pack the stone.