As a designer, I’d rather work with a front yard with a small slope (18″ to 3′ elevation change) than I would a flat landscape. There are so many advantages to having a sloped front yard landscape. A yard with a small slope really gives you the chance to really display your plants.
Put Annual Flowers closer to Where you can Enjoy Them. Bring annual flowers that are usually only 12-18″ tall closer to where we can see them. Set them above a small retaining wall so they can drape over it. Design the retaining wall a couple of feet back from the sidewalk so that you can plant annuals and bulbs in front of the wall then on top of the wall put more flowers up closer to a person’s eyesight, ability to smell and in reaching distance. Put another level here with more flowers to one end (of course keeping budgets in mind).
Retaining Walls and Stairs are Beautiful. Expensive but so pretty! There is so much you can do with materials colors and textures. Pull elements from the style of your home and use those elements in your walls. You can’t put walls and stairs in our yard as easily if it’s flat. If you built your own home you probably spent hours and hours working with a designer or architect choosing materials. For example, consider building your retaining wall with the same materials as your home. Here is an article showing some great ways to work layout stairs and retaining walls.
Problems with a sloped front yard landscape. There are problems with a sloped yard if they are not planned right. If you choose to just plant the grass with a slope from your front door to the public sidewalk or street without choosing to retain it. Mowing a steep yard isn’t fun. Water will run off much quicker (depending on your soil’s absorption abilities) and could even cause an annoying erosion problem. I remember working on one landscape where because of the slope the soil would run off the yard and down the sidewalk. The sideyard almost always had a mud delta on it where the soil runoff was happening.
Take a sloped front yard landscape and turn it into a beautiful display of your favorite plants.
