Steep Hill Landscaping

If you want to beautify the surroundings of your home and yet retain as many natural landscape features and landforms as possible, your best bet would be a manicured garden with steep hill landscaping.

Rainfall and erosion can play spoilsport with your steep hill landscaping and therefore many property owners shy away from this kind of landscaping because it involves high maintenance.

If rock hasn’t been made use of to construct your steep hillock, a retaining wall must be built to contain and prevent the soil and other materials from getting washed away in the torrential downpour.

Another thing to keep in mind is the alteration of the placement of materials and density of things because of the passage of time. If your steep hill is well made, it can survive several seasons of erosion, denudation and rainfall.

A retaining wall can prevent plants, rocks and soil from sliding down a steep incline and protect against injuries or accidents caused by falling down.

Check to see that the wall you are constructing is much higher (by at least several feet) than the current soil level at the intended site.

Building a very high wall ensures that the soil or mud that will accumulate at the base of the wall during a washing down will not spill over. It will also check the negative outcome in case of a landslide.

You would also like to climb up your steep hill. To facilitate this climbing up, it is a good idea to pave a pathway up the hill or build stepping stones that will lead the way upwards. This will ease the process of climbing up to the summit and also prevent erosion. If the pathway curls round the hill in circles or curves, access to the top will involve no effort at all.

Such a curved walk will also be beneficial for carrying things down or up the hill.

Just as you come across terrace farming in upland hilly regions to utilize space and also to prevent erosion, similarly, you can add graduated terraces on the hill slope which will put an end to erosion and down sliding. The terraced platforms can be used to create colorful flower beds or plant flora. But this will require a bit of alteration along the hillside.

Some trees ideal for steep hill landscaping are conifers like pine or juniper, the densely interlocked roots of which can bind together and hold the soil and offer stability, thus reducing the likelihood of landslides.