A sloping site reworked into three level terraces, planted to hold the bank and arranged around the afternoon sun.
The situation
The house had been extended towards the garden, but the ground fell away about two metres from the back door to the rear boundary. That left a set of steep steps down to a lawn nobody used, and a bank that shed silt across the paving after heavy rain.
The owners wanted somewhere to eat outside that connected to the living room, and they wanted the planting to do the work of holding the slope. They also wanted to keep the two established kowhai near the western boundary.
What we did
We set the levels first. Three terraces let us take the fall in stages rather than in one retaining wall, which kept the walls under the height where they would have needed engineering and consent. Each wall is dark schist, laid to the same coursing so the changes in level read as one system.
The upper terrace sits level with the interior floor, so the doors open straight onto it. The middle terrace takes the table and the afternoon sun. The lowest terrace is lawn, kept rectangular and small enough to mow in one pass.
Planting holds the batters between the terraces. Carex, poa and coprosma were chosen because they knit at the root and stay dense through winter, when a slope is most likely to move. The kowhai stayed, which set where the western steps could go.
The result
The garden takes the same fall as before, but in steps you do not notice while using it. Silt no longer reaches the paving, because the bank is planted rather than bare.
The compromise is the lower lawn. Keeping the walls below the consent threshold meant the bottom terrace ended up smaller than the owners first pictured. They chose the levels over the lawn size once we set the wall heights out on site.
From the build
