Ideas & guides · Plan your yard
Decorating a Sloped or Terraced Front Yard
The yard climbs from the sidewalk to the house. Everything ends up on the bottom tier because that is the easy one to carry to, and it looks wrong. Why?
Because the tallest piece is at the bottom, and from the street it stands in front of everything above it. On a slope the ground is already giving you tiered eye levels for free. Put the short things at the front and let height increase going up, and the whole yard becomes visible at once.
5 minute read.
A slope is a grandstand, if you use it that way
On a flat lawn, everything sits at one eye level, and creating depth is a real problem you solve with careful spacing and varied heights. A sloped yard has that solved before you start: each step up the hill is a row that can be seen over the row in front of it.
That advantage survives exactly as long as nothing tall is at the bottom. One six foot piece on the front tier occludes a band of everything behind it, and because the ground rises the occluded band is wider than it would be on the flat.
The instinct puts the big piece at the bottom for two honest reasons: it is nearest the car, and from the front door looking down it appears to be in front of everything rather than blocking it. Both are views nobody else has.
Terraces, drawn to scale
Sloped or Terraced, 55 ft of frontage, Winter Wonderland at One nice thing. 5 spots filled, $252.32 of a $500 ceiling.
The retaining walls across the lot are the tier lines. Spots on the lower tiers are the small ones, and the height increases going back and up toward the house, so nothing stands in front of anything else.
Where each size goes
| Tier | What goes there | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Bottom, nearest the sidewalk | Path lighting, low markers, nothing over about 3 ft | Anything taller here blocks the two tiers behind it, and this is the tier people pass closest to. |
| Middle | Mid-height pieces, 4 to 6 ft | Visible over the bottom tier, and reads as the middle distance of the composition. |
| Top, by the house | The tallest piece and the roofline run | Nothing is behind it to block, and the extra elevation makes it read taller than it is. |
| The steps themselves | A continuous lit line | The steps are the strongest feature the lot has and the one most people leave dark. |
The steps are the best thing you own
A flight of steps up a front yard is a ready-made repeating line, rising, in the exact part of the yard the eye travels along anyway. Lighting it is the highest-value thing you can do on this lot shape and almost nobody does it, because the steps read as circulation rather than as decoration.
Stake lights either side of each tread, or a continuous run pinned along the riser line, and the yard gains a lit diagonal from the sidewalk to the door. It also, incidentally, stops people falling down them in the dark on the one evening a large number of strangers walk up them.
Retaining walls do the same job horizontally. A lit line along the top edge of each wall draws the terraces themselves, which is what tells the street the yard has levels at all rather than being a flat lawn with things at different heights on it.
The practical problems nobody mentions
Everything on a slope wants to slide, and staked props on a graded lawn slide downhill through October as the ground softens. Drive stakes in at a right angle to the slope face rather than vertically, and check them after rain.
Inflatables are the hard case. They need a flat footprint and their tether points assume level ground, so on a graded lawn they lean, and a leaning inflatable looks deflated even when it is fine. If there is a flat tier, that is where it goes; if there is not, this is a lot shape that does better with static pieces.
Water runs downhill too. The bottom tier is where it collects, so keep mains-powered anything off it, or set it on a paver rather than in the grass.
Not from the top. Standing at the front door looking down a slope, every piece appears separated and nothing appears to block anything, because you are above all of it. From the sidewalk looking up, which is the only view that matters, the same arrangement can be one large object and some hidden ones. Walk down and look back before you decide it is finished.
Where this usually goes wrong
The tallest piece on the bottom tier
It is the easiest tier to carry to and it is the one place the tall thing must not go. From the street it stands in front of everything above it, and the rising ground makes the blocked band wider than it would be on the flat.
Leaving the steps dark
The steps are the best feature the lot has: a rising, repeating line straight up the middle of the view. Lighting them is the cheapest big improvement available on this shape, and it is also the safe thing to do.
Staking vertically into a slope
A stake driven straight down into graded ground has far less grip than one driven perpendicular to the slope face. Props on a hill migrate downhill over the season otherwise.
The sloped or terraced lot is one of the ten shapes on this site, with the height order up the tiers already worked out and each spot capped to what can actually be seen from the sidewalk.
Plans drawn for this shape
Every one of these is the same Sloped or Terraced at 55′ by 30′, with 11 spots to fill. The map, the yard notes and the do-it-yourself version are free on all of them.
Halloween: Alien Invasion · Cryptid Crossing · The Old Cemetery · Spiders, Spiders, Spiders · Toxic Waste · Witch's Brew · Zombies
Christmas: Christmas Tree Forest · Classic White Christmas · The North Pole · Nutcrackers · Reindeer Pen · Santa's Workshop · Under The Tree · Vintage Christmas · Winter Wonderland
Valentine's Day: Cupid's Bow · Lace Valentine's Day · Sparkle Hearts
Easter and Spring: Easter Bunny Visit · Eggs, Eggs Everywhere · Spring Flowers
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