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Garden Too Steep To Use
The garden slopes so much that there is nowhere flat to sit, play or put a table, and mowing it is a chore.
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What's happening?
A steep garden is a design problem with a structural answer. You cannot remove a slope; you can only redistribute it. Every square metre you flatten has to have its soil either cut away and taken off site or built up and held in place, and the held-in-place part is what makes terracing a construction job rather than a gardening one. The usual approach is to break one long slope into two or three level terraces linked by steps, with each change in level retained. Getting this right depends on three things a professional will measure before designing anything: how much the ground actually falls, what the soil and subsoil are, and where the water goes once you have interrupted the slope it used to run down.
What usually causes it?
- The plot was created by cutting into a natural hillside, leaving a fall across the whole garden
- A garden that steps down away from the house, so the usable space sits furthest from the back door
- A cross-fall as well as a fall down the garden, which makes any single level feel wrong
- Previous owners having tipped spoil or built up beds, steepening part of the slope
- A slope that was terraced once with timber or dry stone that has since failed
- Access constraints — no side gate or route wide enough for plant — which pushes the design towards cut-and-fill balance
Is it dangerous?
The slope itself is not dangerous, but two parts of the fix are. Any change of level a person can fall from needs protection, and Approved Document K of the Building Regulations covers protection from falling for that reason — a new terrace with an unguarded metre drop off the end creates a hazard that did not exist before. Excavating into a slope also temporarily destabilises what is above it, which is why cut faces get battered back or supported while work is under way rather than left vertical overnight.
Can I fix it myself?
Measuring is genuinely useful and free. Run a string line level from the top of the garden and measure down to the ground at intervals to find the total fall — that number decides whether you are looking at one retained step or three. Sketch where you actually want a flat area and how you would reach it. Small-scale terracing of a shallow bank with low timber edging is within DIY reach. Anything that involves retaining more than a low step, moving significant volumes of soil, or forming steps people will use in the dark is not.
When should you call a landscaper?
Call a landscaper when you want usable level space rather than just tidier planting, when the fall is more than a step or two, or when the previous terracing has failed. Get them in before buying materials: the retaining design, the drainage and the access route determine the whole scheme, and a design drawn around the wrong soil or the wrong access gets expensive halfway through. Where a new retained level sits against a boundary or a neighbour's land, that needs raising at design stage too.
What will the landscaper actually do?
- Survey the levels to calculate the total fall and the cut-and-fill balance, and dig trial holes to establish soil, subsoil and any rock, which governs the retaining design
- Design the terraces so cut and fill roughly balance, reducing the volume of soil taken off or brought in
- Build the retaining structures to a detail suited to their height, with drainage behind each one
- Form steps and any ramped route between levels with consistent risers and goings, and guarding where there is a drop
- Reinstate drainage so intercepted surface water is collected and taken to an outfall rather than pooling on the new flat areas
- Bring topsoil back over the finished levels and lay turf, paving or planting as designed
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