How to landscape a heavily sloping lawn?

Hi all,

My partner and I would like to level and re-turf our backyard. I have attached some photos but I'm looking for advice on where to start and the required steps would be to do this in this situation. The lawn wasn't maintained when we purchased the property and is primarily weeds and mud.

The lawn slopes away steeply at the rear where the tree is which is fine, its just the rest of the lawn we would like to be as level as possible. Not sure of the grass or soil unfortunately however its generally shaded throughout the day.

Any advice would be great!!

Thanks

Andrew

possible.

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Comments

EricL

Hello @amace

Welcome to the Bunnings Workshop community. It's wonderful to have you join us, and thank you for sharing your question about landscaping your lawn.

Having a sloping lawn has its good and bad points. For example, your lawn will always drain efficiently due to the slope in the soil. A disadvantage is having to push your mower uphill when lawn mowing.

One way to change the slope is to install a retaining wall. This will allow you to build up the area so that it is level and flat. You can either do a single wall at the end or do a staggard set so that you have multiple flat levels.

However, if you are after a recovery effort, I suggest having a look at this discussion - Lawn renovation by @homeinmelbourne. Its a comprehensive method of how they revived their lawn.

Here are some handy step-by-step guides:

Here is a link to to a featured project: Sloped garden transformation by @CatB222

Let me call on our experienced members @Adam_W, @homeinmelbourne and @Dave-1 for their recommendations.

If you have any other questions we can help with, please let us know.

Eric

Dave-1

Good Evening @amace

I actually get excited when I see a sloping lawn! There are so many ways to use it for a benifit.

- You could terrace it as @EricL has mentioned. I have built a bunch of gabion walls for retaining soil. They work really nice to raise a section of land and allow water to drain through. Best part is that they are easy to build.

- You could put in some berms to slow the water running downhill, allowing it to soak into your block. I have them on my block and have worked it to funnel water around the yard. That way I get to use any runoff serveral times (I have it run past some liquid ambers trees, Snow drop flowers, a mango tree, another tree that I have forgotten what it was, coffee tree and some rosemary bushes finally. ) I do intend to plant more plants on the berms over time.

Do you want a flat lawn to be able to play games on? Having a shaded lawn can be hard to grow grass, Tho I do know wthere are some grasses that manage shade. Trees taking up nutriants and the the associated change in ph of the soil can be an issue. Id check your soil ph, see what trees you have around and see if the ph matches up with them. That way you will have a base to start with what you can grow. (I have a large ghost gum in the backyard and the grass grows but not great. I do note that my compost bins nutriants are right next to the edge of the branch line 🙂 )

Looking at the photos it seems there are some foot path traffic used areas across the yard? If thats the case you could put in some kind of path then revitilise the grass elsewhere (The grass that I can see looks healthy and green)

amace

https://www.workshop.bunnings.com.au/discussion/comment/29306#Comment_29306

Thanks very much Eric!

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