Opinion

Have you ever hiked the Appalachian Trail or one like it? One of the great pleasures is to enjoy a walk in the woods and fields without having to stumble through the brush or worry about what’s underfoot. You can move quietly through nature, enjoying the wildlife around you. Those of you with natural areas on your own property probably would enjoy it more if you had nice trails to walk on year round.

I’m old enough to remember when the “Weed Eater” first appeared on the landscape scene. As a landscape gardener I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. I could manicure lawn grass in rough and hard-to-reach areas like roadside ditches and around utility poles, fence posts and fire hydrants with ease. Landscapers embraced this breakthrough invention, and eventually every homeowner had one.

“The Constitution does not erect a firewall around family law.”

“We are grateful to descendants, advocates, historians, legislators of both parties.”

It’s tragic to spend the time and money to build a retaining wall only to have it fail. Unstable walls can be dangerous; at the very least they are a discouraging waste of resources. Over the years we’ve seen far too many of these “hardscape fails”, and they have certain things in common. Here’s how to avoid some of the most frequent mistakes.

Building decorative garden walls is very satisfying and rewarding, as well as being good exercise. We define “decorative” or “landscape” walls as wall less than two feet high. Retaining walls for purposes like holding back hills, supporting paving or buildings, and controlling runoff are more serious projects. Let’s call them “engineered walls”, because when the purpose of the wall is more functional, with long-term consequences, some basic engineering is essential.

I have fought my whole career for fair trade that puts American workers first, and stood up to presidents of both parties on behalf of Ohioans. One of my proudest votes was against NAFTA.

“The property is far better aligned with the township for provided services than the village, who provides no services.”

By Sherrod Brown

In the Senate, I serve on two of the least partisan committees– the Agriculture Committee and the Veterans Affairs Committee. It’s not a coincidence that those committees are also two of the most productive.