The Notch sits at eleven hundred feet, and the frost here pushes thirty inches deep some years. Everything this studio builds starts below that line — compacted subbase, free-draining stone, filter fabric, an outlet at the toe — because a garden wall is a drainage decision wearing a handsome coat. What you see above ground is the easy half; we put our reputation in the half you never will.
The studio note
Free within thirty minutes of the Notch
The studio’s list
Two crafts, kept deliberately narrow
Soldier courses & edging
Brick and stone set on end — soldier and sailor — in full mortar beds over a compacted base: the crisp vertical rhythm that carries a terrace edge, a step riser or a parterre line. Struck thin, pointed tight, and laid to a string that bends only where the drawing says it does.
Seat walls, curves & hearths
Seat walls on a drawn radius with coping cut to follow the bend; hearths in graded firebrick for the gardens that live outdoors in October. Curves are drawn, not improvised — the through-bond at each change of direction is scheduled on the sheet, and the drainage behind is on it too.
Since 2011
The studio record, counted
How a garden wall survives here
Frost to cope
Visit one
The measure walk
We walk the garden with a tape and a string, shoot the fall, and leave a scaled drawing — radius, coping cuts, drainage and all — with a written number that holds sixty days.
Days 1–2
Dig past the frost
The trench goes to sound subsoil and the base is compacted in lifts; geotextile, free-draining stone and a toe outlet go in before a single unit is bedded. Water is the mountain’s only argument, and it is answered with geometry.
The lay
String, radius, course
Soldier and sailor courses set on end in full beds, curves laid to the drawn radius, through-bonds at every change of direction. Pointed tight and struck thin — a joint you cannot find with a thumbnail.
Week 3+
Cope & cure
Stone coping bedded in NHL 5 against the weather, mortar cured under covers until the mountain approves, then the fifteen-year warranty signed into your name — and the garden handed back for good.
Wren Tan
Founder, Soldier Course Studio
Trained in Kyoto and Keswick in equal parts; opened the studio at the Notch in 2011 with one rule — nothing gets laid until the water has somewhere to go. Fourteen seasons later, the rule has not changed and neither has the warranty.
“A garden wall has two clients: the person who commissioned it, and the frost. The frost is the more demanding of the two — it pays nothing and reviews the work every single winter. We build to that review.”
W. Tan · from the studio’s standing brief for new commissions
Selected commissions
The garden book
Six gardens from the Notch and the valleys below — soldier edgings, seat walls and two hearths that get used more than the kitchens. Every owner will take your call; the studio makes the introduction gladly.
The mountain season runs May to September — four months of laying, eight months of drawing. Winter commissions are drawn, priced and queued for the first thaw; the measure walk itself is year-round, weather permitting and often not.
The studio drew our wall before quoting it, and the drawing showed a drain we did not know we needed. Three winters of frost heave all around the valley, and our terrace edge still reads like a ruler. The neighbours have all come asking for the number.
They asked what the garden does in February before they asked what it does in June — which is the entire mountain, understood. The hearth burns every weekend from October and the joints still look struck yesterday.
Asked on the measure walk
What is a soldier course, exactly?
A course of brick or stone set vertically on end, like soldiers on parade — its twin, set on the long edge, is a sailor course. On end, the unit presents its strongest face to the ground and the weather, which is why terrace edges and step risers outlast everything around them when they are laid this way.
Why does the studio dig so deep?
Because frost is a pump: it lifts whatever sits above it and drops it back a fraction off true, every winter, forever. Below the frost line the ground has no opinion, so that is where the base goes — thirty inches at the Notch, verified on the drawing.
Can the wall curve?
That is the studio’s signature. Radii are drawn, not improvised — the coping is cut to follow the bend, and the through-bond at each change of direction is scheduled on the sheet. Straight walls are simply curves of infinite radius, and we lay those too.
What does a commission run?
Soldier edging from $84 a linear foot, seat walls from $96 a square foot of face, hearths from $4,200 drawn and laid. Every number is confirmed by the measure walk and held sixty days, drainage and coping included.
Soldier Course Studio · Lic. GS-30971 · Hobb’s Notch · (555) 306-9931 · studio@soldiercourse.example