SMALL ON TOP. Use larger stones as often as possible for the lower courses. ... Fortunately, stone walls that are laid dry allow water to pass right through them.

A three-foot-tall wall should be roughly two feet wide at the base, and one foot wide at the top. When building any wall, free standing or retaining, it is important to have each course of stone ...

To top off the wall, heavy large stones are stood up for extra weight. “The technical term for dry stone is gravity wall,” Carrington said. “Gravity is the key element.

Building walls and archways with stone is slightly more difficult than building with brick, ... coat the top of each stone with cement paint just before applying the mortar mix.