Landscape gardener, leveling and terracing a sloping garden

Terracing or leveling a sloping garden also adds interest, allowing planting at different levels with flowers at the top and vegetables at the bottom. The combinations are endless and for gardeners plant choice is not limited because of soil erosion. Leveling slopes that either slope away or toward the house into terraces will give you many more design and planting options.

What materials can be used to terrace a slope.
There are two main ways of terracing a slope. One is to build stone retaining walls using pre-formed concrete stacking blocks (not cheap), breeze blocks (relatively cheap) or natural stone (expensive).

The other way is using wood to form the retaining walls. Reclaimed railway sleepers are fairly cheap and treated to last. But the downside with railway sleepers is the treatment used to preserve them such as tar make them unsuitable for sitting on or contacting with bare skin, especially if you suffer from allergies. The safer but slightly more expensive wooden option is to build the retaining walls using new Oak beams or sleepers. These will need to be treated over the years to prevent them from rotting.

Can I level a slope myself?
Leveling and terracing a sloping garden takes a lot of time and effort. Shifting earth, maybe digging out clay, But It is a job you can handle yourself if you can't afford to hire a landscape gardener. But bear in mind, if things start to go wrong and you end up calling in landscape gardeners to put it right when the walls retaining the terraces start to give, it will be a lot more expensive in the end.

How to terrace a slope, build a retaining wall in a sloping garden.
If you do decide to terrace the slope yourself it will be worth the hard graft, stopping the impact of erosion by forming even a short slope into terraces will save money on plants and make the area more workable, also lawned areas will be easier to cut.

You can use a range of materials to form the retaining walls from the two main ones we have discussed earlier, treated wood or stone, through to house bricks (reclaimed brick makes an attractive wall), concrete, quarry rocks and if the terracing isn't very steep you can use compacted piled earth. The durability of the wall will depend on the material you use and the quality of the footings you build the wall on. 

Basic design advice for building a retaining wall.
Try to keep the maximum height of your walls to about two foot. If you build higher make sure the retaining wall leans slightly back into the soil. Retaining walls take a lot of pressure from the weight of the soil and rain water (a single cubic foot of wet soil can weigh up to 100 pounds). If you are using cemented stone or concrete to retain the terraces in the slope, form weep holes in the bottom of the wall.