Hillside Gardens
Not every vegetable garden’s site is flat or gently sloped. On this page you’ll find options for planning vegetable gardens on hillsides, slopes, and terraced terrain, including:
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- Why sun-facing hillsides are great vegetable garden locations.
- How sloped locations have a larger area to grow more vegetables.
- How to solve a sloped site with terraces and retaining walls.
- Why flat planting beds are best for vegetables.
- How to control water flow, drainage, and manage irrigation in a sloped or terraced garden.
- Building tips for leveling a sloped vegetable-garden site.
- Creating a beautiful vegetable garden in a sloped or terraced yard.
Introducing Hillside Vegetable Gardening
Besides being efficient and practical, terraced hillsides and multilevel planters often are among the most attractive and interesting of all vegetable gardens.
Hillsides fill with fruit and produce by terracing them and planting vegetable plants. You can increase dramatically your area for growing vegetables: Simply create a series of steps that are walled on the downside slope and filled atop with rich garden soil.
Landscape sloping hills with retaining wall terraces or planters made of structural timbers, stone, or masonry. These hardscape improvements create fertile planting spots, restrain erosion, and provide flat surfaces for easy access.
Terraced retaining walls hold soils in place, preventing erosion during periods of rain.
They also allow you to add amendments to the planting soil that improve its texture or alter its acid-alkaline balance [see Testing Soil].
Special care is needed when planning a terraced garden on a steep slope. Soil is heavy, and rainwater adds far more weight to it. Both exert huge structural forces on terrace walls. A gallon (3.8 l) of rainwater weighs about 8-1/3 lbs. (3.8 kg), and a single sustained downpour may stress your retaining walls. Plan walls so water can pass through weep holes or other drains you provide.
In general, it’s a good idea for garden walls taller than 2 ft. (60 cm) to be designed and built following the recommendations of an engineering professional. Use materials specified for your terracing project and its particular site conditions.
Gentler slopes often are ideal sites for building dry-stacked fieldstone walls. They’ll add interest to your garden with interesting texture. Such loosely fit stone walls allow water to drain easily through spaces between the stones.
Step each course backward, leaning into the hillside, as the wall rises in height for greater stability. Many such walls also have ample room for built-in niches and ledges. Use these for containers of vegetables, flowering companion plants or trailing vines, even statuary and fountains, to add visual appeal to your landscape.
Smaller slopes are ideal locations for tiered raised beds. They progress up the slope in the same fashion—if at a more modest scale—as do terraces on large hillsides.
A major advantage of many wall-and-terrace, dry-stack, and raised-bed gardens is the ease of their care. You can stand at the foot of a terrace and cultivate, hoe, weed, or water the plants in the tier above with minimal bending.
A hillside terrace garden has all of the benefits of a French intensive garden, plus the added beauty that a lush and productive vegetable garden can add to your home’s backyard.
Beautiful Terraced Vegetable Gardens
Hillside terrace gardens are beautiful because each planting bed on the slope is easy to see and the symmetry of the beds creates a geometric pattern.
Like raised beds, these gardens are easy to access and maintain from level paths on the downslope side of each beds. Stairs or steps join the beds along the slope of the hillside.
Maintain consistency of style and materials in each section of the terraced garden for best results.