Sloping Garden Design Ideas: How to Give Every Level of Your Garden Its Own Job
Summary
The best sloping garden design ideas use the slope as part of the design, splitting the garden into two or three level areas and giving each one its own job. A level patio close to the house suits dining, while the banks between the levels are ideal for planting. Retaining walls and steps hold the levels together, and the drainage needs planning from the start, because water on a slope always runs to the lowest point. That leaves the top of the garden free for a seating area that catches the evening sun.
Key Takeaways
- Giving each level its own use makes a sloping garden easier to plan and much easier to live with.
- A dining patio usually works best on the level closest to the house, where it’s easy to carry food in and out.
- Retaining walls over about a metre high should be designed by a structural engineer, and every retaining wall needs drainage behind it.
- Decking more than 30cm above the ground usually needs planning permission, which matters on a slope, where a deck can sit well above the ground at its lower edge.
- Rainwater collects at the bottom of a slope, so the lowest level needs a planned way for it to drain.
A sloping garden can feel like hard work, with a lawn that’s awkward to mow and a patio that never quite sits level. At Green Acorn Landscape Design, we have over 10 years’ experience of garden design in Warrington and across the North West, and several of the gardens we’ve designed and built have been on sloping plots. That work has shown us where a level patio will actually fit on a slope and which changes in height need engineering, so the ideas in this post come from gardens we’ve built ourselves.
In this post, we’ve put together sloping garden design ideas for each level, from a dining area by the house to somewhere to sit at the top, to help you see how the slope can shape the layout and what needs planning before anything is built.
Sloping Garden Design Ideas for Every Level
The easiest way to plan a sloping garden is to start with how you’d like to use it, because what happens on each level decides how big it needs to be, and that in turn decides how much soil has to come out and how tall the walls holding it back will be.
For most households, that means somewhere to eat close to the kitchen and somewhere quieter to sit further away, with planting on the banks that link the two, although which way round they go depends on where the sun falls through the afternoon. You can see how this works in practice on our Garden Transformation, Warrington project, where we dug into a sloping garden to create separate levels, with retaining walls and steps leading between a seating area and an outdoor bar.
Here are some of our best sloping garden design ideas for each part of your garden, so you can maximise every corner and make better use of your outdoor space:
A Dining Patio Close to the House
A dining patio works best on the level nearest the house, where it’s only a few steps from the kitchen, so it becomes the part of the garden you use most, whether that’s a coffee in the morning or dinner outside on a summer evening. On a sloping garden, we’ll cut into the bank or build up the lower side to give you a level space with room for a table and chairs, and lay it with a gentle fall, so the rain runs away from the house and the walls stay dry.
For more ideas on shaping a garden around the way you use it, see our post: How a Garden Designer Creates Outdoor Living Spaces.
Planted Banks Between the Levels
Planting the slopes between levels is one of the easiest ways to make a sloping garden feel softer and more natural, because you get to enjoy the colour and foliage from the levels above and below. Shrubs and ground cover plants also knit the soil together with their roots, and a planted bank takes far less looking after than grass you’d otherwise have to mow at an angle.
Where the slope allows, we’d always rather plant a bank than wall it, because it gives you more of the garden to enjoy and less to maintain.
Somewhere to Sit at the Top
The top of a sloping garden is often the sunniest spot in the evening, when the lower levels have fallen into shade, and it gives you a view back over the whole garden that you don’t get from the house, which makes it a lovely place for a second seating area.
Decking works well here because it can sit on uneven ground with far less digging than a patio, although according to the Planning Portal, decking is only permitted development if it’s no more than 30cm above the ground, so a deck that’s raised at its lower edge will usually need planning permission.
Because a raised seating area can look into the neighbours’ gardens, it’s worth planning some screening at the same time, so it feels private and relaxing to sit in. For ideas, see our post: The Best Garden Screening Ideas For Overlooked Gardens.
Retaining Walls That Hold the Levels
Retaining walls are what turn a slope into level, usable space, and they can do more than hold back soil, giving you a built-in edge for a raised border or a low wall that doubles as extra seating. Because they’re holding back the weight of the ground behind them, every retaining wall needs drainage built in behind it so water can’t build up and push it out of line, and any wall over about a metre high should be designed by a structural engineer.
Garden and retaining walls don’t need approval under the Building Regulations 2010, whatever their height, which is why we take care with how they’re built, so your walls stay straight and solid.
Steps That Are Easy to Use
Well-designed steps make a sloping garden easy to move around, so you’ll find yourself using every level and not just the patio by the house. Shallow, generous steps are comfortable to walk up with a tray of drinks or a watering can, and keeping each step the same height makes them safer for children and older visitors.
On a gentle slope, wide steps can even become a feature in their own right, with room to sit on them or line them with pots.
Lighting for the Steps and Edges
Lighting the steps and the edges of each level means you can keep enjoying a sloping garden after dark, with the changes in height easy to see and the garden looking its best from the house in the evening. We plan the cable runs before the paving and walls go in, because adding them afterwards means lifting finished work.
Drainage at the Bottom of the Slope
Water on a sloping garden always heads for the lowest point, which is often the patio by the back door, so getting the drainage right is what keeps each level dry and usable after heavy rain. We’ll give each level a gentle fall towards somewhere the water can go, whether that’s a planted bed, a channel drain along the paving, a soakaway at the bottom of the garden or permeable paving that lets the rain soak straight through.
If you can, walk the garden a day or two after a downpour before your consultation, because seeing where water already collects helps us plan the levels around it.
Why Choose Green Acorn Landscape Design for a Sloping Garden?
A sloping garden involves far more groundwork than a level one, and that’s where our experience makes the biggest difference. We’re used to excavating new levels, building the retaining walls and steps that hold them, and laying the ducting for garden lighting before the paving goes down. That means we know how to turn an awkward slope into a garden you can use every day, and which parts of the build need the most care.
Every garden we design starts with a site survey, where we look closely at how your garden falls and where the water goes, then produce a 3D design before work begins. On a sloping plot, that lets you see how each level and flight of steps will look before anything is dug, and change it while changes are still easy to make.
Green Acorn Landscape Design won a BALI National Landscape Awards Principal Award in 2020, 2021 and 2023, and we’re a Marshalls Register-accredited landscape contractor, which provides independent recognition of our work’s quality. To learn more about how we work, see our post: Why Partner with Green Acorn Landscape Design for Your Next Garden Project?
Making the Most of Your Sloping Garden in Warrington
Handled well, a slope can become the best part of your garden, with more separate spaces to enjoy than most flat plots, from a patio for everyday meals to a quieter spot to sit at the end of the day. The sloping gardens that work best are the ones planned around how you want to use each level, with the retaining walls, steps and drainage designed to suit.
Get that order right, and the changes in height become the feature that gives your garden its character, with every level earning its place.
Contact Us Today
To arrange a visit and talk through how the levels in your garden could work, call us on 01925 598 800 or send a message through our contact page.
Frequently Asked Questions
How Many Levels Should a Sloping Garden Have?
That depends on how steep the slope is and how you want to use the garden. A gentle slope can often be handled with two levels and a few steps, while a steeper garden may need three or more, each with its own retaining wall. Fewer, larger levels usually feel more spacious than lots of small terraces.
Can a Sloping Garden Have a Lawn?
It can, and a lawn is much easier to mow and use when it sits on its own level rather than on the slope itself. Grass on a steep bank is awkward to cut and tends to dry out at the top and stay wet at the bottom, so many sloping designs keep the lawn level and plant the banks instead.
Should I Just Level the Whole Garden?
Flattening a sloping garden into one level usually means a much taller retaining wall at one end, which needs engineering, and a great deal more soil to move. Two or three levels with steps between them follow the natural fall of the ground more closely and give each area its own character.
Does a Sloping Garden Take Longer to Build?
A sloping garden usually takes longer to build than a level one, because the levels have to be set and the walls built before the rest of the garden can go in. We’ll give you a timescale during the consultation, once we’ve seen the slope.