If your garden slopes up or down you will obviously have to expend more energy in pushing your wheelbarrow up the slope. Apparently everyone who gardens on a slope is happy to put up with the extra effort involved because of the views that come from the elevated position. I found this article by Alys Fowler writing in the Guardian who explains how she copes with her sloping garden and also includes some useful tips.

Everyone who gardens on a slope says the same thing: it’s all about the views. Whether they’re looking across the sea or gazing down at a river, this is why they reconciled themselves to a future of pushing barrows up steep inclines. The openness and drama of so much landscape is quite something to garden.
But with it come many challenges. My own garden has a?gentle slope, the back door being four feet or so higher than the bottom. My slope wanders across the garden, dipping and tipping as it goes. In such a?small garden this means everything is on show, so I have learned to employ tall plants to create intrigue. Wigwams of sweet peas, runner beans and Verbena bonariensis force the viewer to move around the space. The annuals are relocated each year, allowing me?to tease out different designs. It’s an illusion, of?course: in 60ft there isn’t an inch I?don’t know.

Still, imagine if you were looking out on to a more dramatic slope. How do you go about designing the space without endless terraces?

Christine Haines’s back garden looks down over a valley of trees and a slice of the river Wye ? quite a view. The garden was home to a nursery in the 1970s and was overgrown when she moved in. She enlarged the two level areas to open up the garden by building two small terraces.

Read the rest at The Guardian
Image source: F.D.Richards