Custom-built walls that hold ground and look like they belong there — sized and set for the way your land actually moves. Backed by our 20-year guarantee on structural integrity and drainage.
Fitting the Boulders
Want to see it from another angle, or the crew mid-install? Check out the Our Work page.
How It's Built
A boulder retaining wall lives or dies by what's underneath it, not the boulders you can see. We start by excavating a footing trench below grade and building a compacted base course — usually Class 5 — so the whole wall has something solid to sit on instead of settling unevenly the first spring thaw.
From there, the largest boulders go in first, along the bottom, set with a backward batter into the hill rather than stacked straight up. Each course steps back slightly and staggers its seams over the course below it, which is what actually resists the pressure of the soil behind it — not weight alone. As we build, we backfill behind the wall with clean drainage rock, and on taller or longer runs, perforated drain tile, so water has somewhere to go instead of building up against the stone.
The boulders themselves are fieldstone or granite, typically 18 to 40+ inches on the face depending on the wall's height and the look you're after. We source them locally, and for smaller accent walls or tie-in areas, we can often pull suitable stone right off our own lot of centerpiece boulders.
Why Boulder
A dry-stacked boulder wall isn't rigid. It can flex slightly with frost heave instead of cracking the way a mortared block or poured concrete wall can over a Minnesota winter.
Held by weight, batter, and drainage — not mortar joints. There's nothing to repoint, reseal, or patch as the wall ages.
Natural fieldstone and granite settle into a yard instead of reading as a construction project five years from now.
Where We Build
We build boulder walls for properties throughout the Rochester area and the towns around it. If you're not sure whether you're in range, just call — chances are we can get to you.
Boulder Wall Questions
Most residential boulder walls we build here run about 2 to 4 feet, which typically doesn't require a stamped engineering design — but that cutoff depends on your local building department, not just the wall itself. Anything taller, or any wall holding back a driveway, structure, or steep slope, we'll point you toward an engineer before we start digging.
It depends on the height and your city or township's rules. We'll tell you upfront, when we walk the property, whether your project needs one — we'd rather flag it before we start than leave you to find out later.
Yes, on nearly every wall we build. Water pressure building up behind a wall is the number one reason retaining walls fail, so we backfill with clean drainage rock and, on taller or longer runs, perforated drain tile that carries water away instead of letting it push against the boulders.
No. Our boulder walls are dry-stacked — held in place by the weight of the stone, a backward batter into the hill, and proper drainage, not mortar joints. That's actually an advantage in this climate: a dry-stacked wall can flex slightly with frost instead of cracking the way a mortared or poured wall can.
A typical residential wall runs anywhere from a day to a few days once we're on-site, depending on the length, height, and how much excavation and hauling it takes to get there. We'll give you a real timeline for your specific job after we walk the property, not a generic estimate.
Sometimes. If you've got field stone on-site that's the right size and shape, we'll work it into the wall and save you the cost of sourcing more. Most jobs still need boulders brought in to fill it out — we source those, or pull from our own lot of centerpiece boulders.
Yes — every boulder retaining wall we build is backed by a 20-year guarantee on structural integrity and drainage performance. If something we built fails to hold or drain the way it should within that window, we'll make it right.
“We hired the Herbst brothers originally to do a boulder wall in our backyard and it exceeded all expectations we had. The wall was so uniquely built and had so much character yet it looked like the boulders they fit together were meant to go together like puzzle pieces. Great service, great people, highly recommend!”
— Jacob & Alli S.
Like What You See?
Call, text, or email — we'll walk the property with you and give you a straight answer on what it'll take.
