Hi,
New to the forum and hoping for some advice on my plans for my back garden. I’m a reasonable DIYer but prior to this have never done much with a garden other than rip it out! I guess mainly I want to know if any of you pros and more experienced landscapers would anticipate any problems with my plan. Any advice would be much appreciated. Mostly my questions relate to walls and tiering rather than the decking I intend to build so I hope I'm in the right place.
We live in a terrace with a large, steep back garden which I’ve started to level off in stages. See image. Hoping for some advice on this
first tier. I’ll split it into two parts.
Right side:
Where I have dug out there I plan to simply cover in membrane and gravel/stone. I plan to fix the wall where it’s come away bottom left and then remove the crumbling inner wall (down to a point where I can bury it). I can’t see as this inner wall is supporting anything and it’s pretty weathered. Would you anticipate any issue bringing that inner wall down?
My main concern on this side is the ramshackle wall at the back of this area (red arrow). It’s about 3 – 4 ft high and it appears not to go down any lower than what you can see here. There is nothing holding it together, it’s just stones laid on top of each other. Could this be supporting the patio area above it (with the shed on)? I’d like to take it down and put up another wall a bit neater but fear disturbing it could cause more hassle than it’s worth and compromise the shed whilst I work on putting a new wall back up. The shed is staying. Even though it's a mess, would I perhaps be best to let it lie?
Left side:
Here I intend to membrane and gravel the area below the yellow line, and above that have an elevated deck on the level where it’s dug out to at the top, so it would be elevated above where the yellow line is by about 1 - 2 feet.
Where I’ve dug out and left a wall of earth at the back (green arrow), I plan to build a wall about 2 - 3 ft high, which the decking will butt right up to. There is more work to be done further up the garden at a later date and I hope to be able to make the ground behind this new wall a little higher than the level it’s currently at, to save me having to move as much earth as I dig out the next tier.
The neighbour’s wall to the left as you can see is a state. He rendered it very nicely on his side but left a mess on ours. I gather this is strictly not allowed but it was a previous neighbour and was before we moved in ourselves so not much we can do. I wondered if I could have my decking posts on that side come up quite high then put some panelling across them to try and hide it a bit.
Any thoughts at all would be much appreciated.