Cool Hillside Stairway Planter

There’s a steep hillside in your yard, and you want to beautify the space and make it productive. What to do? Install this beautiful combination stairway and raised planting boxes, that’s what!

When our friends Mike and Celeste moved into their home several years ago, the vast majority of the backyard was a concrete slab. Additionally, there was a significant slope along the back of the yard that dropped down to another approximately 10’ wide space along the back fence.

After breaking up all of the concrete, Mike created a beautiful green space and repurposed the broken-up concrete to cover the slope ( ...way to go, avoiding taking the concrete to the landfill!). Still, Mike saw there were some missed opportunities to give additional convenient access to the lower part of the yard, create a small gardening plot, and create more interest along the slope.

Ever the problem-solver, Mike designed this really cool combination hillside stair and raised garden box set, using standard-sized dimensional lumber (2x12 or 2x10), although you can use different materials or adapt the design to use landscape timbers.

Mike was able to use 10’ stringers for the stair stringers as well as the outer box sides. Some things to keep in mind as you design and install your hillside stair and planter combo include:

Make sure to secure it to the hillside to assure the whole unit doesn’t slide downhill. Don’t count on the soil in the boxes or the stair stringers and box sides to do this for you. Use some long steel stakes, driven in vertically and screwed to the box and stair sides, to make everything secure.
When irrigating, drip is probably best, and remember that the water that is applied to the upper boxes will migrate down the hill.

Keep things in proportion and make it easy for you and other visitors. This means avoiding having the boxes be wider than 4’ as it gets hard to reach that far as well as doing your ongoing cultivation of the growing space. If the boxes are too wide, you will start stepping into the boxes, someone you want to avoid so you don’t compact the soil.

There are two things you can do to make the stairs securer to navigate. First, you can install some kind of rail, or vertical posts to grab onto. Just remember, the more you have between you and the growing spaces, the more effort it takes to tend your hillside garden. Second, the wider you make the stair treads, with a small amount of drop between each step, the surer your footing will be. This is essentially creating a series of landings rather than steps. This is the approach Mike took, and it works well!

YOU CAN BE VERY CREATIVE in designing your hillside stair and garden box system! Consider these approaches:

How about an arbor at the top or bottom (or both!) of the stairs?

Lighting options are myriad - so have fun! This is a great feature to light up for evening enjoyment!

You can both multiply and reduce this system. For instance, you can have the steps with only one set of raised beds along one side of the stairs. Or, if you have a larger hillside to work with, you can multiply the gardening space by using multiple step sets with raised bed planting boxes between them!

You can use linseed oil, outdoor stain and finish, or a product like Thompson’s WaterSeal to treat the lumber to make it more durable, or to color the wood to make it match other elements in your yardscape.

Our thanks to our friends, Mike and Celeste, for sharing this great yardscape addition with all of the DirtFarmerJay Viewer Family! You guys rock!

Got a gardening challenge or problem area like this in YOUR yard? Now, you know you can JUST DO IT YOURSELF!