While having a sloped yard is sometimes seen as a challenge, with the proper landscape design techniques, you can transform your yard into a little bit of heaven. Landscaping a sloped yard requires careful planning. Our landscape designers have put together some considerations and tips for landscape design for sloped yards.
Table of Contents
Making Your Sloped Yard Functional
The first thing to consider when planning the design for your sloped yard is functionality. How would you like to use your backyard?
Consider these functional landscaping options:
- Retain.
- Adding retaining walls to create level areas for better usage. There are a variety of material options so personal aesthetic preference and budget will come into play when building walls. They can be located to provide leveling on either the high or low side.
- Level.
- Leveling out large sections to add outdoor living features such as a fireplace, outdoor kitchen or large sections of turf.
- Pave.
- Adding a path with switchbacks to aid in slope management and to add accessibility to different sections of your yard.
- Elevate.
- Adding a staircase using flagstone or siloam steps can add personality and defined style to your space.
- Combine.
- If choosing to leave the slope, adding stability using a mixture of shrubs and trees is important. If the slope is steep you may want to build up around the base of the plant to create a “bowl” to help retain water around the root zone.
- Rock.
- Placing rip rap or cobble rock on a slope can help stabilize the area as well and is not as expensive as a vertical retaining wall.
- Water.
- Utilizing existing elevation change to add a cascading water feature. Waterfalls and flowing water create soothing sounds and elevation change is needed to accomplish that.
Slope Friendly Plants
Plant selection for your sloped landscape is a very important step. If you plan to have your plants installed on a slope, select plant varieties that are deep rooted, drought resistant, and good for erosion control. If possible, select Colorado native plants so they will be acclimated to our local environment. Native plant varieties are typically great for erosion control. Plant choices for leveled sections of your landscape can be much more varied. If you are adding grass starting from seed on a slope, you will want to make sure you install an erosion control netting to keep the seeds and soil in place until the seed is established. If you are planning on having shrubs, annuals and trees on the slope, you will want to plan for drip irrigation for those plants.
Landscaping your sloped yard will not only open more space for your use, but it will also create a well-manicured and beautiful outdoor living space for you and your family. Let Timberline Landscaping create your landscape design for sloped yards and our design team will take care of all the planning and hard work. Contact us to get started!
