Building a retaining wall with railway sleepers

[jameswcole]

So next door’s garden is about 1 foot higher than mine with new panelled fence along the boundary. Presently we have a flower bed sloping up to level of their garden i.e. base of fence. Am converting flower bed to flat lawn space as more suited to kids, thinking of using sleepers to hold back their garden and stop it collapsing into mine under fence when I level out the flower bed. Using sleepers (with their narrow edge facing down), think it would only need 1 sleeper, possibly 2. Seems easy enough to join two together if needed with some timberlock screws, but question is, how do I keep the sleeper upright and holding back the ground on other side?

All the online guides are for much higher retaining walls so have steel H beams – can I just use short fence posts? Or some metal rods that have some lateral strength – these would be easiest to bang into ground I think, if such a thing exists. Would prefer to avoid using concrete if possible.

Anyone else done this, thoughts welcome!

[rainbowgardener]

I use steel rebar to hold together my raised beds of stacked fence posts . Just drill a hole down through their stack and pound the rebar in. Just be sure the hole is barely big enough to get the rebar in.

(Sorry if there are typos in this . I'm on their road and doing it on my nook, which keeps thinking it knows what I want to say better than I do and changing things , )