Watching a guy lay a curved garden wall in Lexington taught me more than any class

Riley Coleman · 2026-10-20T22:15:04.21732+00:00

I was in Lexington two months back helping my cousin on a small job and we stopped by a site where an older mason was building a curved garden wall. He had a 4 foot piece of garden hose laid on the ground and was using it as a template for the curve, then setting each brick off a string line he kept moving every 3 courses. I had never seen anyone do that and it looked simple enough that I tried it on my own job the next week. It took me about 2 hours to get the curve right on a 12 foot wall but the joints ended up way cleaner than my usual freehand work. He also told me to cut a handful of bricks at a slight angle on the ends instead of forcing square ones to follow the bend. Has anyone else used a hose or something similar to trace a curve before setting bricks?

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