Sloping Garden Design Ideas

I've designed many sloping gardens, and I'm going to share some tips with you for creating the perfect garden on a sloping side. You need to create flat spaces. For example, for seating areas and lawns, and the only way to do this is to terrace the garden.

To create the terracing, you need to build some retaining walls to support them. This, beware, is not cheap. First of all, you'll need to measure the garden and survey the levels.

You need to find out the height differences between the various parts of the garden. You can hire surveying equipment, and your library will have books on how to use it. However, if you have complex level changes, it's worth paying for a professional level survey.

Your local horticultural college may even run a short course on surveying. It's very important to get the levels correct. This will tell you how high any retaining walls need to be.

So for example, if your garden slopes away from your house, and you're trying to create a patio directly outside the house, the further away from the house you want the patio to extend, the higher the retaining wall will need to be. A higher retaining wall needs more steps to access the lower and higher levels. Avoid using very high retaining walls and split the garden into fewer shallower levels.

Now, you need to decide what material you want to use to build the walls. There are many different options when it comes to construction materials for walls. You can use concrete blocks, simply rendered, or faced with stone.

You can use brick, stone, gabion cages, railway sleepers, timber, and even compacted earth. Choice of building material will depend on your budget, the look you're going for, and what the wall is to support; by which, I mean how much weight of soil it is holding back. If it needs to be robust, you won't really want to use railway sleepers.

You'll need to use something much more substantial. One of the practical considerations when designing and building a garden on a slope is getting rid of the earth excavated. You'll need to dig footings for the walls and excavate the levels, and this will create a huge pile of excess soil.

Make sure you factor into your cost the price of skip hire or a grab loader to dispose of the soil. I think gardens with different levels are the most interesting. The level changes dictate that the garden is split into different areas, each with its own distinct character.

You can use the level changes to create gorgeous water features, and paths that weave down through the levels. You have many more design options than with a flat site. .