Ideas Library · Landscape Transitions
Taking a Small Level Change in Plan, Not in Section
A modest fall resolved by grading and planting rather than by a retaining structure, suited to gardens with room to spare across the slope and owners who would rather not own a structural element for the rest of the garden's life.
Spaces:sloping gardenback gardenlarge informal gardenrural garden
Style:naturalisticinformallow-maintenancecontemporary
Where this idea works
Where this idea works
Contexts this direction tends to suit — and, honestly, where it may not.
- Gardens with a modest fall and space to lay it back
- Owners wanting to avoid owning and maintaining a retaining structure
- Schemes where planting, not walling, is meant to be the visible material
- Sites where the slope can be absorbed away from the house and boundaries
Where it may not fit
Where it may not fit
- Falls or ground conditions that need retention, which is a matter for a qualified engineer
- Narrow plots where the footprint the bank consumes is the usable garden
- Boundaries where laying the ground back would encroach on a neighbour or a services route
- Banks that would sit above something unable to tolerate movement
Planning
Planning considerations
- The first question is whether the level can be laid back at all, which the ground answers rather than the garden design
- Laying ground back changes where water goes, so confirm the new low point has somewhere to drain
- A bank consumes footprint on both sides of the fall, at the crest as well as at the toe
- Topsoil stripped for grading has to go somewhere on the site or leave it, and that is decided before the digger arrives
Layout
Layout considerations
- Set the toe and the crest where they do least damage to usable flat ground, not simply at the ends of the existing slope
- Vary the steepness along the run so the result reads as landform rather than as an earthwork
- Keep any route across the bank at a gradient people will actually use rather than cutting straight up it
- Check the bank does not block a view or a sightline the original fall left open
Materials & finishes
Materials and finishes to discuss
Named generically as starting points to discuss with professionals — not specifications, and not priced.
Consider:topsoil and subsoilerosion-control mattingground-covering plantingmulchsurface drainage provisionturf or meadow seed
- Bare graded ground erodes until planting knits, and the first heavy rain usually arrives before that happens
- The stability of a graded slope is a ground question rather than a planting one
- Runoff concentrating at one point on the bank will cut a channel there
Maintenance & durability
Maintenance and durability questions
- Mowing a bank is harder than mowing flat ground, which often decides what is planted on it
- Planting on a slope needs watering and weeding until it has covered the surface
Professional review
What to ask a qualified professional
Bring these questions to a designer, contractor or the relevant qualified professional or authority.
- Can this fall be laid back safely in our ground, and who determines that?
- What gradient will the ground hold, and what does that leave us at the top and the bottom?
- Where does surface water go once the slope has been regraded?
- What planting will hold this surface while it establishes in our conditions?
- Would a qualified engineer still want to look at this even though nothing is being built?
More ideas
Related ideas
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Landscape Transition Ideas
Educational inspiration for the edges in a landscape — where one ground treatment meets another, where a level changes, and where made ground meets planted ground.
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