Blog Case study
This is the fuller story behind the Knutsford Road, Wilmslow project you’ll also find summarised in our portfolio — a two-tier garden with a retaining wall and porcelain paving that we still point to when clients ask what’s actually possible on a difficult sloping plot.
The Challenge: A Sloping Backyard in Need of a Makeover
Imagine turning a steep, unusable backyard into a functional and elegant outdoor retreat. That was the brief on Knutsford Road — a garden that had defeated a previous landscaper, who had quoted to simply “level it” without addressing why it needed levelling in the first place. Steep gardens don’t stay level for long without proper engineering underneath, and a quote that skips that step is a quote for a problem that comes back within a year or two.
The Solution: Retaining Wall and Porcelain Paving
We designed a two-tier garden built around a substantial natural sandstone retaining wall, creating the level change between the upper and lower sections properly rather than papering over it.
Site Preparation and Excavation
The project started with careful excavation to establish exactly where the new levels needed to sit and how much the retaining wall would need to hold back. This stage decides everything that follows — get the excavation and levels wrong here, and no amount of good stonework above ground fixes it later.
Building the Retaining Wall
The wall itself went in on a deep concrete foundation, with drainage aggregate and a land-drain channel built in behind it. That detail is the entire difference between a retaining wall that lasts fifty years and one that bows within five: without it, water pressure builds up behind the stone every winter until eventually something gives. It’s the exact failure mode of the “just level it” approach the previous landscaper had quoted for.
Porcelain Paving on the New Levels
With the structure in place, we laid porcelain paving across the new tiers — a material chosen for its resistance to the moss and staining that natural stone can pick up in a garden this shaded by the retaining wall and surrounding boundaries, and for the clean, contemporary finish it gives a garden built around a strong architectural feature like this wall.
The Result
A garden that had been essentially unusable for years is now a multi-level outdoor space the whole family can enjoy — a level upper terrace, a defined lower tier, and a retaining wall that does the job properly rather than just looking the part. The structural quality of the wall drew particular praise from clients who had already been let down once by another company’s inadequate approach before they came to us.
It’s one of the projects we reference most often when explaining to new clients why we ask so many questions about drainage before we ever discuss stone colour or paving pattern. On a sloping site, the wall is the project — everything else is finishing. Get the wall right, and the porcelain on top of it will still look as sharp in fifteen years as it does in the handover photos; get it wrong, and no amount of careful paving above will stop the whole terrace moving with it.
Thinking About a Sloping or Difficult Garden?
If a previous quote for your own sloping garden felt more like a shortcut than a solution, our walls and stonework service is built around exactly this kind of structural work — proper foundations, drainage designed in from the start, and a finish that matches the engineering underneath it. See the full case study on our portfolio page, or get in touch if you’re in Wilmslow and facing a similar challenge.
