Specialty Gardening: Cottage Garden in Southern California?, 1 by jkom51

jkom51 wrote:
I don't think our property slopes quite as much as yours, but you can get a slightly better idea of how we terraced it by looking at the photos on our Comcast web page:
[HYPERLINK@home.comcast.net]

It helps to have broadband, it's very photo-heavy. Check the "Installing the Garden" pages for start-to-finish photos. These are years 2002 through 2004, I haven't updated the 'Barbaricum' planting photos, which are photos 2-6 that were posted above on Dec 8th.

Remember that with a good overall plan, you can do the installation in phases. It is much easier, cheaper, and less daunting to tackle small portions. But an overall plan is useful because you want your garden rooms to "flow" neatly into one another.

We used concrete blocks for a couple of reasons:
1) They're easily available and delivered to your door by the big box stores or concrete centers.
2) They take less footing and drainage prep than any other terracing method available to us.
3) Once the footing is properly prepped and leveled, they go in very fast
4) They are permanent - they don't rot or mildew, yet they allow drainage. We have clay soil, this was VERY important to us.

The downside:
1) Cost is higher than wood or poured concrete. But the labor and time is much less, proportionately, so I feel it evens out.
2) For serious slopes, you will need the heavier blocks, and that is a 2-person job. Such blocks weigh 75 lbs apiece and are not manageable by a single worker. Our largest blocks weigh only 37 lbs each and the smaller ones are 8 lbs, so my husband was able to do the work himself.

Note that the 37 lb blocks are strong enough to do an 8' wall if the footing is properly prepared, though, so if you can find them (the ones we used are no longer made) it would be possible for you to terrace at least part of your property yourself. The smaller blocks are only useful for a 4' wall -- remember that the height of a retaining wall includes the footings, so you are losing 4-6" when you allow for sinking the first level of blocks halfway into the ground.

Here's a photo of the larger (37 lb) blocks used in the highest retaining wall: