04 / 05Selected work
Garden terracing, patio & stairs
A sloping back garden cut, terraced and rebuilt — segmental retaining walls, a poured concrete patio and stairs, a paver walkway, railings and drainage, with the mature planting kept standing around it.
- Project type
- Landscaping and hardscaping
- Client sector
- Residential
- Location
- West Vancouver, British Columbia
- Status
- Completed
A garden on a slope
A single-family home on a sloping lot. The back garden fell away from the house through mature hedging, a Japanese maple, roses and established beds — good planting, around a slope that left the house almost no level ground.
Moving earth next to the house
Making level ground out of a slope means moving a great deal of earth and then holding it in place. Every cut has to be retained and every new level has to drain — and here the excavator was working within a few metres of the house and of planting that had to survive, with every load of soil going out along one access route. The house fixed the levels at one end and the existing garden fixed them at the other.
Terracing and hardscape scope
Excavation and regrading, segmental block retaining walls in stepped tiers, a poured concrete patio, cast concrete stairs with formed cheek walls, a paver walkway edged in concrete, metal railings, drainage gravel along the foundation, and beds graded and prepared for planting.
Levels decided before digging
We set the levels before anything was cut — where each terrace would sit, how the stairs would land, where the walkway would run. On a sloping lot that decision comes first, because every wall height and every step follows from it, and none of them can be changed once the earth has moved.
Walls, concrete and paving, in order
Wall bases were trenched, filled with crushed gravel, compacted and levelled to a string line before the first course went down — every course above only sits true if that one does. Excavation, walls, concrete and paving followed one another instead of overlapping: on a site with one way in and out, two trades wanting that route at once is what turns a schedule into a queue.
A terraced garden
Stepped retaining walls wrapping two sides, a broad concrete patio off the house, cast stairs down to a curved paver walkway, railings, and level beds graded and ready to plant.
What the house gained
Outdoor ground it did not have before — a patio at the door and a level garden beyond it, reached by stairs instead of a slope. The hedging, the maple and the roses that made the garden worth keeping are still standing in the finished photographs.