Yard Plotted to scale, promise

Zombies · Sloped or Terraced

Zombies layout for a Sloped or Terraced

The lawn is coming apart and things are getting out of it. Headstones, hands, and half-figures pushing up through the grass, arranged so the whole yard looks like one bad night rather than a store display.

your sloped or terraced, 55′ × 28′ 6 of 11 spots filled
To-scale site plan for a Sloped or TerracedA to-scale overhead site plan of a sloped or terraced, 55 feet of street frontage by 60 feet deep, with the house set back 30 feet from the front sidewalk. The street runs along the top of the drawing. 6 of 11 marked positions are filled. Filled: the star; sidekick, left; sidekick, right; the step lights; roofline and porch; the bottom tier. Left empty: under the porch roof; deeper, off to one side; along the eaves; porch posts and rail; the front door. STREETRETAINING WALLHOUSE8 STEPS55'ABmax 6'Cmax 6'DEFmax 5'Pmax 8'Hmax 6'TRWmax 6.7'

Drawn to scale. Everything is measured in feet from the front sidewalk, and your front door is 80″ tall if you need something to check against.

this theme on this shape

Zombies fills 5 of this shape's 11 marked spots for free, and 10 of them once every budget is unlocked.

With everything unlocked, one spot stays empty because everything that would go there is too tall for the cap on that spot: the bottom tier.

One of the pieces here is rated by its maker for covered use only, and this shape has a spot under a roof to put it, which is why it can be in the plan at all.

The one nice thing version comes in at $293.93 against a $500 ceiling on this shape, which leaves real room for a second run of lights or a better centrepiece.

first, the deal with your yard

Read this before you buy anything

A slope is free staging. Every tier is a shelf, and the yard shows off its own layers the way a flat lot never can, so a modest display looks like a lot more than it is. What it costs you is stability and safety. Nothing sits level, stakes pull out downhill under wind, and water runs to the bottom of the yard and pools exactly where you wanted to put an extension cord. Everything needs shimming, and everything needs staking harder than the instructions say.

Who's looking, and from where

  • Looking up from the sidewalk, the tiers stacked one above the other
  • From across the street, where the whole slope reads at once
  • Climbing the steps, one tier at a time

The classic mistake

Putting the tallest thing on the bottom tier because it is the easiest to carry to. It hides everything above it. Height goes up the hill, not down.

Check this one thing

Do not run cords across the steps, ever. Route them along the back of a wall or under the bed edge, and give anything at the top of a retaining wall a real stake plan. A piece that blows off a wall lands on the sidewalk.

same yard, four budgets

Pick your number

Every version below was worked out against the map up there, and nothing gets a spot unless it physically fits. Footprint and height both. The Do it yourself version is free and complete, so you can go do that today. The other three are the paid guide.

Every price below was checked on or after 27 September 2026, and each item carries its own date. Holiday pricing moves weekly.

Do it yourself Free

stays under $250
$215.94 $34.06 to spare

One weekend, a sheet of plywood and some string lights. Costs almost nothing and still stops traffic.

The Do it yourself plan: every piece, its spot on the drawing, how big it is, how many and what it costs.
Spot What to get How big How many Cost
A Plywood Tombstones Build it
The star. Top terrace, beside the walk. Being uphill already adds apparent height, so you can go a size smaller than you would on flat ground and still have it tower over the sidewalk. This one works just as well mirrored to the other side of the walk, so if a tree, a slope or the way you come and go says the far side is better, swap it and swap its partner with it. What matters is that it is beside the path and not standing in it.
2' H 1 $28
B Lighted Graveyard Fence, 8 panels (opens in a new tab) Amazon 8 pieces
Sidekick, left. This is 11 in. tall, so it is an edging rather than a barrier. Run it along the front of a bed to draw the boundary of the graveyard, and let the line of it curve. Lean a panel or two and leave a gap where something came through. It charges by cable rather than taking batteries, which is the good news and also the thing to remember: top it up in the afternoon on the 31st, because there is no swapping in fresh cells at eight o'clock.
11" H 1 $53.99
C 13 in. Ground Breaker Hands, pair (opens in a new tab) Amazon 2 pieces
Sidekick, right. Put them in front of a tombstone rather than out in open lawn. Hands coming up beside a headstone tells a story; hands coming up in the middle of the grass just looks like somebody lost a glove. Push them in at different angles and scuff the grass around each one so the ground looks disturbed.
1' 1" H 1 $29.99
D Green Solar Path Stakes, 10 pack (opens in a new tab) Amazon 10 pieces
The step lights. Both sides of the steps all the way up, then along the top of each retaining wall. Lighting the wall edges is what makes the tiers visible after dark, and it also stops guests from walking off one.
1' 3" H 2 $51.98
E Orange Incandescent Mini Lights, 300 count (opens in a new tab) Amazon 300 pieces
Roofline and porch. Gutter line and porch. Remember the house already sits above eye level, so the roofline is further up than the ladder you used last year.
2" H 2 $51.98
the plug situation

2 things need an outlet, about 2.2 amps all together. That all fits on one 15 amp circuit, you are fine. Outdoor GFCI outlets only, and leave a drip loop in the cord at every plug so rain runs off instead of in.

You will also need

The cord is the part everybody forgets, and stores run out of them at the peak of every season. Outdoor rated only, and plugged into a GFCI outlet.

About $31.96 of hardware, on top of the $215.94 of decorations. Buy it once and it comes back out every year.

Image prompt for this exact list
Photorealistic evening photograph of a two-story house set above a terraced front yard with stone retaining walls house on a sloped or terraced, 55 ft of street frontage with a 30 ft front setback, photographed from the public sidewalk at the bottom of the slope looking up the terraced front yard and its steps toward the house above, camera height 5.5 ft. The yard is decorated in a zombies theme. The lawn is coming apart and things are getting out of it. Headstones, hands, and half-figures pushing up through the grass, arranged so the whole yard looks like one bad night rather than a store display. Decorations, in position: 1. The star: a small group of gray weathered headstones at three different heights, leaning at slightly different angles, one of them broken off short, 2 ft tall. Top terrace, beside the walk. Being uphill already adds apparent height, so you can go a size smaller than you would on flat ground and still have it tower over the sidewalk. This one works just as well mirrored to the other side of the walk, so if a tree, a slope or the way you come and go says the far side is better, swap it and swap its partner with it. What matters is that it is beside the path and not standing in it. 2. Sidekick, left: a low run of black fence panels staked along a bed edge, purple and orange light in the rails, the line of it bending rather than straight, 0.9 ft tall. This is 11 in. tall, so it is an edging rather than a barrier. Run it along the front of a bed to draw the boundary of the graveyard, and let the line of it curve. Lean a panel or two and leave a gap where something came through. It charges by cable rather than taking batteries, which is the good news and also the thing to remember: top it up in the afternoon on the 31st, because there is no swapping in fresh cells at eight o'clock. 3. Sidekick, right: two gray clawed hands pushing up out of the lawn as if something is digging its way out, 1.1 ft tall. Put them in front of a tombstone rather than out in open lawn. Hands coming up beside a headstone tells a story; hands coming up in the middle of the grass just looks like somebody lost a glove. Push them in at different angles and scuff the grass around each one so the ground looks disturbed. 4. The step lights: 2 of them, a line of short stakes throwing sickly green light up the edges of a path, the color of something radioactive rather than something growing, 1.3 ft tall. Both sides of the steps all the way up, then along the top of each retaining wall. Lighting the wall edges is what makes the tiers visible after dark, and it also stops guests from walking off one. 5. Roofline and porch: 2 of them, a dense run of small orange bulbs following a roofline, warm and slightly sickly rather than festive, 0.2 ft tall. Gutter line and porch. Remember the house already sits above eye level, so the roofline is further up than the ladder you used last year. Shot at dusk with the sky still faintly blue, every lit decoration switched on and brighter than anything else in the frame, warm light spilling onto the lawn. Palette: #6E7B54, #3A3A38, #8A5A3A, #C4B79A. Nothing floats; every piece sits on the ground at the stated distance. Scale reference: the front door is 80 inches tall.

see it first

The other two prompts

Each budget above has its own prompt for the finished yard, because each one is a different list of things. These two do not change between budgets: one for the empty yard so you have a before picture, and the negative prompt that stops every image model on earth from burying your lawn in snow you did not ask for.

the free ones keep coming

New plans go up through the season

The Do it yourself version above is free and complete, and every theme that goes up gets one, drawn for all ten yard shapes. That is 10 free plans per theme, and the list grows through the season.

One email when there is something new. Nothing else, ever.