Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 140, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 June 1911 — TURF AS BUILDING MATERIAL [ARTICLE]

TURF AS BUILDING MATERIAL

Solid Walls and Flights of Stops of Living Green God Seen at Hartford, Conn. >

The possibilities of turf construction, both i for ornamental and utilitarian purposes, may be seen in the sunken garden at Elizabeth park, Hartford, Conn., which was designed and executed-under the supervision of George A. Parker, superintendent of parks. In this garden there are terraces, retaining walls, flights ot steps (one of them 36 feet wide), paths, parterres and other architectural features, all made of living turf. The technique of constructing a turf retaining wall is similar to that of laying bricks in building a brick wall. Stout turfs cut i.* by 16 inches and about two inches thick were used to build the turf walls in the sunken garden above described. On a foundation layer of about two feet thick the turfs were piled up one layer upon another, each layer being tied in by means of headers and rampers so that as the turfs grow they will Interweave and Interlace. All cracks and crevices where the pieces of turf join were filled in with smaller pieces of turf, says Country Life in America, and each layer pounded into place with a tamp and leveled off. It is Impossible to build an absolutely perpendicular wall of turf, because it is essential that the outer edge of each layer of turf protrude slightly beyond the edge of the layer above it. It is on this protruding portion of the turfs that the grass grows which will cover the outside of the wall with a carpet of living green. The minimum lateral inclination of these turf walls from the bottom upward Js about three Inches to the foot There is one instance of a turf retaining wall 600 feet long and from 15 to 16 feet high. The site of it was formerly a ragged, unkempt bank at the mercy of every rainstorm. It seemed as if the only way to keep the dirt from washing into the roadway beneath was to build an expensive stone retaining wall. The turf retaining wall was finally built, and it has served its purpose adequately for over a year.' The. wall is built in two tiers, one about half the height of the other and sloping up to it so as to act as a buttress. An average of about ten cents a cubic foot is what Mr. Parker estimated that a finished sod wall would cost, but of course this would vary greatly according to local conditions. The cost of a stone wall varies from 25 cents to a dollar a cubic foot, so that from these rough estimates it may be seen that the cost of turf construction is probably less than half that of stone construction.