How to construct a tiered garden

A tiered garden is a great solution to an awkward sloping garden, and while there is obviously some landscaping work involved, it's a fairly straightforward process to take on as a DIY project.

14th Jun 2019

Becki Bell

A tiered garden is a great solution to an awkward sloping garden, and while there is obviously some landscaping work involved, it's a fairly straightforward process to take on as a DIY project.

If you are planning to terrace the garden as a whole, you have a few decisions to make:

• How many levels will you have?
• Where will each terrace end?
• How high will each terrace be?
• How will you retain each terrace?
• How will you get down to the lower levels?

Once you've decided on the basics, it's a case of excavating out from the lower level to where you want your retaining wall to be, and then building a stable structure to hold back the level above.

With careful planning, the soil you've excavated should more or less fill in the space behind your retaining wall, leaving you with a terraced garden to finish landscaping and planting.

Tiered flowerbeds and shrubberies

It's essential that you get your retaining walls right to prevent your newly constructed terraces from slipping down the slope in the future, so if you're not confident, tiered flowerbeds are an alternative option.

Rather than terracing the garden as a whole, you can just dig out sections and build terraced raised beds using timber such as planks and sleepers.

Again, you can build multiple layers on top of one another to step the flowerbed up a slope, and this can give you a striking effect alongside a sloping lawn.

Tiered planters

Finally, tiered planters are a way to bring height to flat gardens - overcoming the exact opposite problem to that already mentioned above!

You can buy flat-pack tiered planters to construct at home in a matter of minutes just by bolting the various parts and panels together.

Once it's built, you can start planting a variety of different flowers, combining those that give good height in the middle of each space, with trailing flowers that will cascade over the edge and down to the level below.

Height is often overlooked in small, flat gardens, in favour of bedding plants that never get off the ground - so put some thought into building a tiered flowerbed and even a flat garden can be made much more dynamic.