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Terraced Backyard Landscaping IDEAS
Photo by Max Vakhtbovych from Pexels
Modern Landscaping

Terraced Backyard Landscaping IDEAS

This is a project very near and dear to my heart. A few years ago, my husband decided that he was tired of mowing our sloped lawn in his golf shoes. He had already lost the lawnmower once or twice when it pulled away from him and shot down the slope into the fence. He decided enough was enough. And even though we had many offers to videotape him doing this incredible feat and turning it into America’s Funniest Videos, we decided we needed to do something else and fast!

On getting a few estimates on how much it would take to turn our sloped grass yard into one we could actually live with, i.e. a terraced yard due to the degree of slope, we decided we couldn’t possibly afford a professional to do the job. We had estimates that made the rest of my hair turn gray!

So what to do? He began drawing up plans and since he is an accountant and very good with numbers, he was able to actually visualize how he could move the dirt from the upper half of the slope to the lower half of the yard and support it with solid brick walls.

Here are some of the tips he employed in this project. By the way – it was supposed to be a 6-week project but as in most things in life, when you get into it, things crop up and you find that you have to do this thing before you can do that thing.

Final timeline on the project? Instead of 6 weeks, it took 6 months.but was it worth it? You bet.to the tune of our investment probably adding at least $15, 000 to $20, 000 to the value of our home when we sell it. I think it was worth it!

Saving Money on a Backyard Terracing Project

Do your homework. Get books from the library or go on line and read about how to terrace.

Draw up a diagram. In order for it to work, it has to be structurally sound.

Visit the local brick yard and talk to the experts. Bob spent many an hour discussing with the folks there how he needed to start the walls. That was the most important factor. Digging them down into the soil, then filling them with rock to keep them from shifting, and finally back-filling the space behind the wall with rock made the walls able to withstand shifts in the ground or water and soil erosion.

Check out your tools. Do you have the proper tools for digging, shoveling, moving large pieces of grass and/or dirt and rock? Bob used his plan to gauge where he needed to cut into the hill and then he and several of his family helpers (I lasted 3 days and quit), dug with shovels and a pick axe or two and then raked, dragged and wheelbarrow’d all the dirt away. Luckily, we had a berm that we could dump the soil over so we moved it behind our fence then raked that out later.

Take your time. When undertaking a project of this magnitude, the best virtue to have is patience. If you look at the entire picture (which I did), it was overwhelming. However, steady and true, Bob looked at it one day at a time and never gave up his dream of being able to terrace the yard and turn useless into beautiful. He started by building the base wall and then attacked the upper wall and the curves. Then we worked at leveling it off and getting our walkways in.

Know your own skill level. The wood stairway was above Bob’s skill level so he did hire someone to work with him on putting that in and getting it level. However, he worked with the fellow doing the work so he learned how to do it and also saved money by helping cut and do part of the work. He went to construction sites and hired a fellow to do the job after work as a freelance job.

Use some ingenuity and save money on supplies. We drove up into the forests and out into the wilderness to pick up rocks that had been part of rock slides or that were along the side of the roads. Some of the rocks were in the roads. We carefully checked for rattlesnakes and loaded up many a rock and carted them home. We used these large rocks to make our walkway down the hill between the flower gardens. We dug out and moved more dirt and slope until we could get a level purchase for the rocks, forming perfect stairs.

Be creative. Then came the fun part for me.putting in some ornamental grasses and some starter plants that we wanted at the top of our base wall. We bought everything we used on sale and all were perennials (though we later found out my beautiful coreopsis were not perennials after all here because they were grown on the other side of the mountain in a different climate). We put our plants in and then began studying to do the next phase – the patio.

See the possibility of change and go with it. We looked at numerous kinds of rock for the patio and finally settled on one that was affordable but came in all kinds of different shapes. At first, we were going to go with a square type of pattern but after Bob and a friend worked an entire day putting in the patio rock, I could tell it wasn’t going to work. Since our property is on an angle, it looked ‘off’ to put it mildly so at my suggestion, they pulled up all the patio brick they’d laid and started over the next day. As it turned out, this time I was right and it really popped doing it on an angle. Bob went to the local rental in town and rented a huge table saw brick cutter for 1 month. Three blades later, and puzzle piecing the patio together, you can see that it turned out beautifully.

Lastly, at the end of the project, more fun for me. Adding in more plants and shrubs to winter over and see what we would be surprised with the next year.

It was one heck of a project and there were times I was pretty tired of it. I had only to think about how tired poor Bob was though and that snapped me back to reality.

We increased the value of our home by at least $15, 000. (We also did our front yard long before the terracing job and that was minor compared to this project).

 

Source: dengarden.com