Home » Misc » Backyard on a hill

Backyard on a hill


Backyard Slope Landscaping Ideas - 10 Things To Do

Break Out in Tiers

1/11

Creating several tiers on a sloped property can help manage erosion and give you the opportunity to layer different plants and landscaping elements for a cohesive design. Whether you use railroad ties, stone pavers, or concrete to form the tiers, they will make a dramatic impact on the overall look of your property.

Related: 9 Clever Landscaping Hacks for Your Best-Ever Yard

istockphoto.com

Build Some Stairs

2/11

If you choose to let vegetation cover your sloping property in glorious abandon, impose a little order by building a set of stairs leading up to flatter ground. Whether you opt for a wooden staircase or concrete steps, this garden feature will blend into the landscape far better if it’s surrounded by plantings on either side.

Related: 12 Perfect Plants for Lining Your Pathway

istockphoto. com

Make a Natural Staircase

3/11

Use a natural material like stone to create a stepped pathway through your sloping property. A stone stairway will complement surrounding plantings and help anchor your landscaping design.

Related: 7 Thrifty Designs for a DIY Walkway

istockphoto.com

Advertisement

Design a Waterfall

4/11

If you’re ambitious, use the height that your hilly backyard provides to your advantage, and build a sensational water feature. The soothing sound of water will bring a relaxing air to your outdoor space, turning it into your own private oasis.

Related: 10 Outdoor Living Ideas to Steal from California

istockphoto.com

Lay a Winding Path

5/11

A winding or switchback path can make it much easier—and safer—to explore a sloped piece of property. A meandering pathway also provides an attractive focal point and draws the eye through the landscape.

Related: 10 Inspiring Ideas for Your Side Yard

istockphoto.com

Erect a Retaining Wall

6/11

You can make a sloping property more functional by cutting away a portion of a hill and installing a retaining wall to hold back the soil. This is a great opportunity to create a dedicated planting area behind and along the retaining wall, while reclaiming a portion of your yard for an expanse of grass on level ground. 

Related: Edge Your Beds: 11 Easy Ideas for Landscape Borders

istockphoto.com

Advertisement

Cultivate a Rock Garden

7/11

Hillsides can pose a landscaping challenge for plants, which can suffer from the soil erosion or poor drainage typical of sloping properties. When you arrange rocks of varying shapes and sizes on your hillside, you create a stable base for  rock-loving plants like stonecrop, ornamental grasses, and creeping ground covers. A rock garden looks lush and satisfying to the eye, and reduces your maintenance load in the yard.

Related: 25 Plants for Your Easiest Garden Ever

istockphoto.com

Devise a Destination Fire Pit

8/11

Building hardscapes into a sloping property is a common and rewarding landscaping practice. When a design culminates in an alluring destination like a fire pit, you’ll draw visitors through your yard and transform what might otherwise be neglected space into the place to be. 

Related: No Money to Burn? 9 Fire Pits You Can Afford

istockphoto.com

Install Veggie Beds

9/11

You can take advantage of unused real estate on a slope that gets full sun by installing raised beds for vegetables. Deeper sections of the beds can be used for root vegetables that require more soil, and the shallower portions will be perfect for herbs and vining plants.

Related: 13 Creative Designs for Easy DIY Planters

istockphoto. com

Advertisement

Rely on Native Plants

10/11

Festooning a hillside with plants that are native to your area can help make maintenance easier in a spot that would be difficult to mow and landscape. With native plants, you can be fairly certain that they’ll be successful without much help from you, and they will help reduce erosion by providing a network of roots to hold soil in place.

Related: 25 Amazing Plants That Are Native to North America

istockphoto.com

How to Cope with a Slope

11/11

With the right plan, even a steeply sloped backyard can be useable and enjoyable.

bobvila.com

Don't Miss!

If you have the money to hire a handyman for every household woe, go ahead. But if you want to hang on to your cash and exercise some self-sufficiency, check out these clever products that solve a million and one little problems around the house. Go now!

Landscaping Ideas For Hillside: Backyard Slope Solutions

Share

Sleep stopes or “banks” run rampant in some San Diego neighborhoods. A by-product of Southern California’s hilly terrain or simply of builder-bulldozed soil, these slopes often characterize backyards, especially in North County. Depending on the slope’s stability and what’s behind it, homeowners have dealt with their backyard banks in a number of ways: landscaping it with ice plant (not recommended), pushing it back for a pool installation, or letting it grow “wild.”

Of course, issues like erosion control and drainage pop up when talking about slope management, and are important slope stability considerations. So before we cover what to do with your steep backyard slope, let’s discuss what’s happening on your slope first.

What Kind of Slope Do You Have?

Drainage —

Where does water drain on your slope? Is it moving across it or down it? Look for water channel clues. Are the channels wide or narrow? What direction are they headed? If the answer is down, erosion control will be a problem and you slope may be more unstable than you want. This is something to keep in mind when you landscape – slope stability.

Dig a hole and fill it with water. Note how long it takes for the water to drain. If drainage occurs within an hour or so, that’s good. If it takes several days to drain, that’s not so good. You don’t want water sitting on your slope because wet soil and mud on a steep hill can cause erosion and slide issues.

Soil —

Dig another hole somewhere on your slope, preferably where you’re considering landscaping. If you find solid rock or clay, the soil on top can slide down your bank easier and this will inform what you plant to better “secure” the bank. Meanwhile, analyze for soil with a home test it. Make mote of what you find because it will inform what types of plants will grow best there (or not grow at all).

Incline —

Is your slope accessible? Are you able to walk up your slope or do you need to hold onto something at all times? Your answers will help you decide if you can plant and maintain your slope or bring some of it into your existing backyard landscape.

Sunlight —

Is your slope in full sun? Again, noting this factor will help you choose how you landscape your slope.

Contemporary Landscape by

El Dorado Hills Interior Designers & Decorators Deborah Costa

What To Do With Your Slope?

Because erosion is an issue in many cases, hillside stability is key. What you plant can address erosion and most hillside movement in your landscape, as can reinforced retaining walls (something has to keep all that dirt and rock up there).

Traditional Exterior by

South Deerfield Architects & Designers Habitat Post & Beam, Inc.

Planting —

Most hillsides can be made relatively stable with plants . The planting should be a mix of groundcover, shrubs, trees, and perennials with the areas between plants covered with mulch or boulders. A mix of plants and vegetation layers ensure that when it rains, the force of the water hitting the ground is deflected. In most cases, if your slope soil is deeper, a mix of deep-rooted plants  like bougainvillea and shallow-rooted plants like monkey flowers or sagebrush are needed to secure the top soil to the bottom rock.

If you have surface soil on solid rock, planting trees helps keep water moving off the slope.

For actual planting, create small divets in the sloping soil as individual planting holes. Stagger planting placement to help to prevent water from running straight down the hill. Dig holes that are large enough to allow the roots to spread out and apply a layer of organic mulch between the plants, such as large bark chips. Be sure to irrigate your planted slope, using drip irrigation or soaker hoses, which allow water to soak into the soil and reduce runoff.

Terracing —

Depending on the size of your slope, you can divide hillsides into more manageable sections with retaining walls, which are strong and stable barrier walls usually made of stone, concrete or lumber. These walls can be placed where they will hold back the soil above, and make a space below that can be left as a slope, leveled, or planted. Multiple walls can be placed at different points to create a terraced look. Terraces can range from a few feet wide and used as planting areas to wide expanses. If your is large, some experts recommend putting an 8-10-foot terrace every fifty feet to make your slope much more functional long term.

Tiering —

Creating tiers down your slope make it less likely to erode. By digging into the hill at certain points, you can also create tiers for planting. Retain the walls of the tiers with stone pavers and layer different plants and landscaping elements to create contrast between tiers. If you use rock walls as tiers, try filling them in with plants, small trees, or even river rock for a natural look.

Contemporary Landscape by

San Francisco Landscape Architects &

Landscape Designers Randy Thueme Design Inc. – Landscape Architecture

Paths and Stairs —

If your slope isn’t dangerously steep, enhance its incline with paths or staircases made of stone. If you do have a very steep bank, consider a winding path made of pavers, or bricks that traverses your slope to create less of an incline. Stepping-stone paths are pretty, too, and add form and function to your backyard.

Rock Landscaping —

Using rocks for landscaping adds some “nature charm,” while also holding plants and soil in place.

Make indentations where rocks can sit without rolling and place different-sized rocks of varying texture and color together in groups. To avoid an all-rock look, leave spaces between groupings and spaces between some of the spaces to add  medium-height plants or flowers to break up the landscape.

Traditional Landscape by

Novato Landscape Architects & Landscape Designers Derviss Design

Go Native —

As you might imagine, native plants are native for a reason. In fact, studies show that using native plants on a slope causes no measurable erosion because they’re adapted to the California environment. Native plants are perfect for sloping hillsides because they’re pretty, stabilize slopes and reduce water usage.

You can also choose native plants with different bloom cycles for year-round color and variation.  If you’re into birds, and butterflies, using native plants will attract them to your bank.

If you do go native, some good choices include California holly, California Glory or Dara’s Gold. Native ground cover options are California perfume, bear berry, and coyote bush.

What Not To Do With Your Slope

Plant grass —

Planting grass does not stop erosion, and it’s been found that 30-75% of all rainfall on grass- covered slopes runs off. Also, seeding a bank with grass creates a weedy slope that is hard to stabilize and makes reestablishing plants much more difficult.

Use plastic —

So-called plastic weed barriers or erosion matting will sooner rather than later curl and kill almost everything under it, except possibly weeds. Plus, plastic in a natural landscape does your backyard no beauty favors.

Use fabric/straw mats —

Fabric mats don’t last, cause greater erosion, and attract rodents. That’s enough about straw mats.

Use ice plant as ground cover —

Ice plants have very shallow roots and are heavy, which add to the weight of the slope, actually encouraging the soil they’re superficially planted in to slide after a rainfall. Ice plant is used so often in southern California because it doesn’t burn very well, and addresses fire concerns. If fire danger worries you, instead of ice plant, use California native plants, which tend to be more fire-retardant than other varieties, and use mulch, which helps keep plants hydrated and a little less flammable.

Good Plants for a Slope

Your Turn…

Backyard slopes can be made into things of beauty, but before landscaping, it’s always a good idea to check with a landscape architect to ensure you’re not creating potential erosion problems. Overall, if you’re still stumped, go with a mixture of deep-rooted California native shrubs, and trees, mixed with shallow-rooted shrubs that are mulched. Do you have a slope in your backyard? What did you do with it?

Yards in the back yard - 135 best photos of the design of the courtyard of a private house and dacha

Private residential house in Rostov-on-Don

Architectural studio Chado

The abundance of greenery set the atmosphere for this project: it turned out to be chamber and cozy due to the variety of plants and fruit trees trees planted around the perimeter of the yard. In this part of the house there is also a summer kitchen with a barbecue area and a dining table. The interior and exterior are united by sliding stained-glass windows on the rear façade. Large windows connect the kitchen-living room to the backyard terrace, where there is a large infinity pool and a stone grotto with a fish pond. nine0007

Custom Suburban Paradise

SOD Home Group

Home Inspiration: Mid Size Modernist Backyard with Stone Paving and Canopy

Santa Cruz Sustainable

K & D Resident 90 LAND03ING home in Santa Cruz, CA This stunning front and backyard project was so much fun! The plethora of K&D's scope of work included: smooth finished concrete walls, multiple styles of horizontal redwood fencing, smooth finished concrete stepping stones, bands, steps & pathways, paver patio & driveway, artificial turf, TimberTech stairs & decks, TimberTech custom bench with storage, shower wall with bike washing station, custom concrete fountain, poured-in-place fire pit, pour-in-place half circle bench with sloped back rest, metal pergola, low voltage lighting, planting and irrigation! (*Adorable cat not included)

San Pasqual-Exterior

J & M Construction & Development

Louie Heredia
Stylish Design: Private Backyard Gazebo in Classic Style with Summer Kitchen and Concrete Slabs - Latest Trend

North Beach Refresh

Board & Vellum

Photo by Andrew Giammarco.
Original design example of a medium sized backyard with fire pit and paving

Carman Bay Cottage (Lake Minnetonka)

John Kraemer & Sons

Builder: John Kraemer & Sons | Architect: Swan Architecture | Interiors: Katie Redpath Constable | Landscaping: Bechler Landscapes | Photography: Landmark Photography

Traditional Pool House with Stone Facade

BEVOLO GAS & ELECTRIC LIGHTS

This Bevolo® original was designed in the 1940s by world renowned architect A. Hays Town and Andrew Bevolo Sr. This Original French Quarter® lantern adorns many historic buildings across the country. The light can be used with a wide range of architectural styles. It is available in natural gas, liquid propane, and electric. Standard Lantern Sizes Height Width Depth 14.0" 9.25" 9.25" 18.0" 10.5" 10.5" 21.0" 11.5" 11.5" 24.0" 13.25" 13.25" 27.0" 14.5" 14.5" *30" 17.5" 17.5" *36" 21.5" 21.5"

Modern Homestead Patio

Kelley Design Group

Covered backyard patio with stone pillars, dark exterior, dining area, grill, natural wood beams and rectangular pool with hot tub.
Stylish design: courtyard in a country-style backyard with a summer kitchen, concrete slabs and a canopy - the latest trend

7

Wagner Residence

Urban Landscape

Jeri Koegel
Pictured: large modern style backyard with fire pit, paving slabs and canopy with

Outdoor Kitchen

90 Photography004 Capital Renovations by 90 Photography004 Capital Renovations Ken Vaughan
Pictured: large classic backyard with outdoor kitchen, awning and stone paving

Estate - Lindon, Utah (40)

Magleby Construction

Inspiration for homeliness: a huge pergola in the backyard of a private house in a country-style backyard with paving slabs and a fence

Casa SC

Bernardo Pozas Residential Design

Source of inspiration for homeliness contemporary style backyard with summer kitchen, concrete slab decking and awning

Mechanicsville Hillside Makeover

Outdoor Dreams

Pictured is a medium sized neoclassical (modern classic) backyard yard with fire pit and paving slabs without sun protection

Answers to Word Stack - BACK YARD

Here our visitors can find out the correct answers to pass level 59, 281, 369, 921, 1102, 1355, 1412, 1964, 2097, 2122, 2238, 2997, 3030, 3594, 4120, 4301, 4441, 4848 with the theme "BACK YARD" in the game " Word (Stack of Words)" in Russian.

Learn more