So we've been looking at a house to buy for months now but the garden is putting us off. The slope is unreal the concrete steps are awful and there's not access either side of house to get to the garden which im assuming is why its not been done. Is there anything that could be done to it to make it usable?
by Informal-Brief1762
14 Comments
A lot of landscaping but anything’s possible given the funds are there. I would run a large deck out from the back, on stilts take a chunk of earth out underneath and create an undercover terrace below the deck. Could make it usable and very cool.
What do you want to use it for? Currently excellent for sledging, though you want to put in plenty of padding at the bottom. You could happily plant up shrubs, trees and ground cover perennials for ornament or fruit. Terraces or decking will give you some small flat areas if that’s what you want. It has the makings of an excellent water feature cascading between small ponds at different levels all the way down.
Oh damn I’d be thrilled with this kind of canvas to work with. I have a love of segments so I’d be looking to make a tiered garden with each different section being a different thing. Here’s a veggie patch, here’s a fruit garden, here’s a designate wildlife patch, pop a bit of seating in this bit etv
Granted it’d be a ton of effort and probably a fair few pennies as well, but yeah for me that’s the dream
Budget dependent, though id imagine you could make the most of the view by building a raised platform. Otherwise perhaps a slalom?
You can get machinery craned in if required. Looks like a water slide waiting to happen to me !
Seriously, it would put me off. Even if it was terraced like a Nepalese mountain it will be a pain climbing back from the end of the garden. I don’t think it’s usable.
What/who abutts you at the bottom? It looks like open countryside views sort of fr 2nd pic?
A slope is ideal for water features, you just need one big pump at the bottom to send it back up and you can do waterfalls, streams, all sorts of cool stuff and make a really unique garden. It’s begging for some creative and interesting planting too. Rockeries, bog garden, wildlife areas, add to the woodland feel that the property behind has going on. All these things don’t need flat space and may even be a lot more interesting due to the slope.
As for no access, are we talking terraced house or just narrow gap? Some of the really small diggers can squeeze through surprisingly small spaces. Or there’s always bribing people with pizza and beer to get some digging done!
I currently have a raised deck off the house, it’s about about 5 foot high. We built up concrete block pillars and built a 6×2 frame for it, which was really quite easy and gives a nice useful area for bbqs and entertaining, plus a kind of dry area underneath that we use like a garden shed.
If it’s not for you and it’s a big compromise though, keep looking. There really will be a better one out there for you and your budget. I’m 3 years into house hunting and “the one” has got away more times than I can count, and the current “one” which is looking like it’s actually happening is way better than all the others were, so I’m glad it’s gone this way and I’m not unhappily in one of the other houses I was settling for.
You could make it into a series of flat terraces with step from each one. But if you buy this place you need to put away a sizeable chunk of cash for this. Levelling the garden and shifting all that dirt and possibly getting rid of some too won’t be cheap whether you need to do it by hand or by machinery.
Have a look at what all the neighbours have done.
Just to add some negativity to my reply, those concrete steps are pretty awful. May be fixable with some creative paving?
Don’t ignore the fence situation here either. That’s going to be a problem, likely very soon after you move in with new neighbours hassling for it to be fixed, and fencing is horribly expensive to get something good done properly, especially with the slope causing complications.
https://preview.redd.it/9z52rmgcoqwf1.jpeg?width=4096&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ae5a7bf691f145d1ad3362bc74ed48db000ab6a8
My allotment is similar steepness, I’ve been building these ‘retaining walls’ to hold the beds up out of scrap wood.
If you are going to get a landscaper in why worry about how they will do it?
Think of all the terraced houses in London, no garden access but all those extensions. They find a way.
Doesn’t necessarily need a digger anyway. If you aren’t interested in gardening then shrubs and trees are going to be the way. Do a winding switchback path all the way down the garden. Fill all the bits in-between with larger shrubs, small trees (maybe smaller at the start, getting larger towards the end). In years time you could end up with something you can wander into and forget the rest of the world existed.
I’ve lived somewhere that was like this but going up, that was quite a lot of work and already terraced and it had the advantage of most of it getting the sun even though it was north-ish-facing because it was so high.
If some of this doesn’t get much sun I would struggle to motivate myself to put the money &/ work into sorting it.
What are you complaining about? Every year invite your mates over and buy a wheel of cheese… The rest will be history!
Roll a cheese down it.