When we moved into our house 3.5 years ago (man, time flies), the appraisal listed “updated landscaping” as a selling feature. I’m not sure how 40 tons of lightly organized river rocks qualifies as landscaping at all, but we immediately started thinking of ways to get rid of or reuse them. Thousands and thousands of river rocks.
“updated landscaping” that we moved into in january 2010
We’d seen cool walls various places around Arizona built out of welded wire mesh “baskets” filled with rocks or concrete or rip-rap or anything else big and heavy you could think of, and thought they were really interesting.
And since we already had most of the requisite material on site, voila, problem solved! There are commercially available gabion basket “kits” that you can buy for a pretty hefty price tag, but they are either custom sized (even more expensive) or stock sized which didn’t exactly fit our imaginative needs. So off we went looking for the raw materials to build them ourselves. The local concrete contractors supply store had huge sheets of heavy gauge mesh at the best prices we could find. It’s just the reinforcing mesh that you would use in a road or concrete driveway. I think ours is 6 gauge wire, and the squares are 4″x4″. The sheets were 7′ by 20′ long, and we got them for about $90 per. Delivery wasn’t really an option, so it was a good thing we have a BIG car!
I could have welded the corners to create the boxes, but I found a place out in california that does commercial gabions to ship me the spiral wires that hold the corners together and some “stiffeners” that keeps the front and back panels from blowing out.
DIY in the Desert 
I was wondering if your remember the supply store where you bought your wire mesh for your gabion wall at. I am having a difficult time finding it. Thanks, Clay
I bought 7’x20′ “sheets” of mesh at Border Products (concrete contractor store). They have thinner gauge mesh, or thicker gauge; we used the thicker stuff. I know you can also get a wide variety of mesh products at Industrial Metal Supply Co; it’s more expensive there, but you can get almost anything you want. Good luck!
OMG, that quality :D, corosion on each mm of material :D, really ??? Dont buy that non quality mat if u want to see better look… 🙂
Haha, I’m guessing it’s a good thing that I can’t understand what you’re saying through the awful grammar or I might be offended! To each his own though; we love the look of rusted metal which is why we bought the materials we did. I would have hated to see stainless steel or galvanized/painted/powder coated metal on all of those walls. We have used rusted or rust colored metal all over our property and really enjoy the aged and “worn” look that it creates!
Wow, l thought I had allot of rock! Mine materializes every time l try to dig a hole. I live in an area that was once a glacial outwash moraine. Hooray for the gabion, my yard was beginning to took like yours.
I love the look of rusted metal but when used in the humidity of the Midwest it doesn’t last long enough. I’d use it if I could.
Could you please share your supplier for the spirals and what they cost? Of suppliers that I can reach, none are willing to sell the spiral separately, they only want to sell the kit. I did find a stainless steel hinge from a farm store for $3.00 for 40 inches. I’d be happy with galvanized spirals.
Thanks! I hope this doesn’t end up as a double post. I somehow ‘lost’ the first one.
Hey Pam! Thanks for the question! Someone else asked the same thing a few days ago, so I’ll just paste what I wrote there below. I don’t recall the exact price, but what I DO remember is that I thought it was ridiculously cheap to buy the materials AND have them shipped to me. Granted, it was coming from California to Arizona. Might be a few more dollars to get it to you in the midwest.
I’m sure there are lots of places to get this stuff, but after searching long and hard, I couldn’t find them. http://www.hilfiker.com was the only place that I was able to come across that would sell me exactly what I was looking for. Other sites sell the entire gabion kits, including wire mesh, but that gets expensive to ship, and wire mesh is easy enough to source locally wherever you are. I was ultimately directed to speak with a really nice woman named Diane Bent at Hilfiker (dbent@hilfiker.com) and she was able to set me up and get everything shipped to my door. Easy! Good luck with your project.