Gabion baskets, also known as stone wall baskets, have gotten more and more popular in these past few years. They can fit into a rustic, as well as a modern garden, don’t require next to no maintenance and offer lots of privacy. More on possibilities, prices and examples can be found here.
The look of your fence is not only determined by the filling of the gabion baskets. The construction plays an important role as well. The structure consists of panels, welded from round or squared profiles. These are galvanised from the inside and outside, and coated with polyester, so they cannot rust. The distance between the profiles (mesh) depends on the desired filling.
The poles between the baskets can be made of metal, hard wood or galvanised and plasticised poles.
Galvanised and plasticised poles
Fully steel stone baskets have the advantage of being one coherent unit. Both the panels and the poles are finished in the same colour.
You can choose a structure that is clearly visible or a structure in which the supporting poles are almost invisible and where the stone baskets almost seem to be one whole.
Poles made of hard wood
Hard wood poles contrast beautifully with the rough stones and give the whole a warmer look. Tropical wood doesn’t need any treatment and gets a sort of grey effect over time.
Gabion baskets with wooden poles can be combined nicely with stone basket benches, finished in the same material.
The filling
The types of stones that are most often used as filling are boulders, granite, limestone and lava rock. Of course you can also choose to fill your stone baskets with natural materials, like tree-bark.
The latter can also be used as a temporary solution, to keep the initial costs under control. After a few years you can always switch to stones if you should want to.
Tailor-made prices for gabion baskets
The placing of gabion baskets is the work of experts. Qualitative materials and a correct placement are the only guarantee for a successful result that will last a lifetime. A stone basket with a length of 16 feet, a height of 3 feet and a depth of approximately 12 inches can cost around £ 135 per meter, standard filling included. Important to know is that gabion baskets are available in all sizes. For example, small baskets are available starting from 4 inches in thickness.
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Buying gabion baskets and placing them yourself
Are you quite handy and is your gabion basket not that high, then you can always choose to place them yourself. Prices depend on the desired size, mesh and the filling.
The price of construction itself starts around £ 18 per meter, but can easily go as high as £ 90. A lot depends on the quality and the chosen size. Stone wall baskets found in DIY-stores are very cheap, but often don’t live as long. You’d better gone for quality material you can buy from the better construction work merchant.
As for the filling, these prices can go from 10 to 30p per kilo. If we convert that to a gabion basket of 3 ft high, 3 feet long and 10 inches thick, we arrive at about £ 3 to 9 per meter. Read more about the price of gabion baskets.
How does the placement of gabion baskets come about?
How this placement happens exactly, depends on the measurements of the baskets. For the smaller baskets you only need a sturdy base, but if you want big stone wall baskets, you need to anchor the poles into the ground. This foundation has to make sure that the heavy baskets don’t subside or fall over.
Next on the agenda is filling up the baskets. With low baskets you can use a shovel, but when you have high baskets you need to fill them manually. When the filling is placed well, the poles in the middle will become invisible.
A nice advantage of gabion baskets is that you can choose the entire composition of the baskets yourself. How long, how high, how deep, it’s all up to you. That way the complete outlook of your fence is mainly up to you. Playing with different volumes is also perfectly possible.
Maintenance
An advantage of gabion baskets is dat they don’t require much maintenance. If they have little sun, then some moss formation may occur over time. But this can be easily removed with a high pressure cleaner. If you want to see as little dirt as possible, it’s best to choose dark types of stones.
Realisations and inspiration
With these stone wall baskets the filling (quarry stones) has the same reddish brown colour as the baskets and the poles. This provides a surprising and warm effect.
This picture shows that gabion baskets can form a very stylish partition. The combination of the baskets, the wall and the natural elements provide a nice whole. As filling boulders was chosen here.
For this front garden they chose a low gabion basket, so that the plants would still be visible, but not reachable. The stone wall basket provides a kind of natural barrier between the drive, the street and the plants.
