Mediterranean Terraces

As you can see from the before pictures, this steep hillside didn't leave much room for a traditional garden. The slope required terracing to make the land usable. An existing footpath traveled diagonally from the bottom to the top of the hill, and we expanded on that.

The retaining walls were hand-placed using eighty tons of four different kinds of stone, aiming for a natural, rustic look that highlighted the existing sandstone and complemented it with the stone we chose for the terrace walls.

Given the proximity to the lookout deck, there was an opportunity to showcase a beautiful fifty-foot waterfall. We used flat lava rock for the waterfall, the diagonal wall, and the steps to make them stand out among the other stones. The waterfall runs on a circulating system pumped to the top of the hill, where it empties into a bowl, then runs down a stream through two more bowls before terminating in the largest bowl at the bottom — engineered to spread the water across the face of the last fall to maximize the cascading effect.