Creating Terraces

Our house sits on 1.25acres of land that in part has slopes that are greater than 25 degrees.  When we built we found our house was sited over an ancient landslip - so not only did we have to put in deep pile foundations to bedrock but also had to terrace about half to two thirds of the block.

The terraces had to slope gently in towards a 'stone river' we had to create. So Fiona and I decided we would capitalise on this requirement and gravel all the terraces and create walk ways across the stone river. We wanted this area of the landscaping to have a bit of a Japanese garden feel about it without actually creating a Japanese garden.

The rain let up a bit this afternoon so I did what I do when I not doing work work and can't really disappear and do art - I went out and worked on the terraces for a few hours. I often think of the terraces and other landscaping as sculpture on a grand scale. As you can see from the photos below, after almost three years of carting about 80 cubic metres of  20mm gravel, in the main by hand in buckets and a small cart, the stone mulching of the terraces is almost done and the trees and shrubs are bursting forth.Good contrast of the green and reds of the camellias and maples with the grey-blue of the gravel.

The aim is to locate some of my bigger pieces of sculpture on the terraces; and set up posts and fonts. But at the moment all there is is the 'happy budda' below (given to me by my brother Neil) sitting amidst the dwarf agapanthus blossoms.