Landscaping on a Hill Without Installing a Retaining Wall: Hillside Terracing a Sloped Landscape

hi this is mark we're here in mission viejo california we're going to do an installation of the dirt locker and the dirt locker is a product made of 100 recycled plastic made manufactured in the united states and it is used to address hills exactly such as this to create a beautiful garden where it was once very difficult to grow things and in this case uh it's even a little bit more challenging because it's on a corner so today we're going to talk with the homeowners of this corner lot and find out why they chose the dirt locker system to resolve their problems and reduce cost hi my name is story i live in mission viejo and the majority of our house is wrapped in a hillside my fiancee did all of the labor in actually putting in a retaining wall in a portion of the hillside and it was not only very costly but the labor that he had to put into it was was a lot um so i have i thought there's there's got to be other options out there other than building a retaining wall so one night i googled hillside landscaping and the dirt locker videos popped up and i watched every single one of the videos and i was instantly sold they solved all of our problems it was the erosion problem as far as the dirt retention of water for the plants and then also something that the the retention walls didn't give was an option to walk up and have steps to maintain you're still going to have weeds no matter if you put down weed guard or you're going to have overgrowth that you need to maintain so you need to access those plants and the dirt locker did all of that and it also seemed to be made out of a material that would last a very long time so if you're going to put forth the effort and the money that was important to me also and not only could you do the hill side landscaping aspect if you had a single tree like a fruit tree that you wanted to put on the hillside there were also options for that to help retain the water and the root system it seemed very simple it seemed logical and a lot easier than a retaining wall and aesthetically the retaining wall is very harsh in my eyes it's very status quo in most of the houses and the dirt locker gives you something aesthetically that you can't do with a retaining wall staggering the plants and having the growth fall like a waterfall so those were the things that interested me the key difference between doing a dirt locker system on the on a corner hillside versus a flat hillside is that on a flat hillside we would assemble the dirt locker network on the ground and pull it up as a single unit well on a corner that doesn't work the same way because of the changing length as you go from the top of the hillside to the bottom so each row has to be created individually and that's what we're going to do starting at the top we install our first row all the dirt lockers in a row will be connected to each other and stake down each dirt locker row will be independent of the other rows using a phone app as our level and a 2x4 we make sure that each dirt locker is level from left to right and from front to back we make sure that all dirt lockers in a row are positioned in a straight line notice we are using backfill to help us position shape and secure each dirt locker each individual row will be customized to fit the contour of the slope's rounded shape we're still going to have the same dirt locker capabilities in terms of being able to traverse the hillside we're still going to have the same water retention capabilities everything about the product itself in and how it's helpful on the slope remains the same it's just the installation that differs a little bit so today we were able to install 78 dirt lockers the homeowner started with a steep eroding slope on a corner lot that was unsafe to work on and unable to sustain plants in less than six hours we transformed this problematic slope into a beautifully terraced hillside that is now safe to access ready for planting and soon to be an amazing garden that the homeowners can be proud of well after spending a day working on the dirt lockers comparatively to the retaining wall that i built this took about four and a half months of my time uh pretty much every weekend and i think a little bit of my soul's in that wall but this we did in about five and a half to six hours with two of us so it really really made a difference and it looks beautiful and i can't wait to get the plants in because i think it really really enhances the beauty of the of the corner all right i think steve already covered the mass amount of labor that it did to do two retaining walls um compared to doing the dirt locker in half more than half the time but i want to talk to you about the aesthetics a lot of the houses have retaining walls or they're just layering bricks it's very harsh as you can see i do have plants that'll eventually drape over but it's going to take a lot of plants to cover this harsh cement whereas you have the dirt lockers over here which give it much more of a cascading effect obviously there aren't plants in here but there are going to be another pro and con of the retaining wall is i still have a slope so water's still going to run down and if i need to step in between the plants yes i can but all my mulch is going to go down i have to replace it or i have to crawl on my hands and needs versus the dirt locker i can easily and safely walk up and down obviously there aren't plants in here but we will be making some throughout that are steps and mark's got a separate video on how to do that devoting a whole dirt locker for a paving stone so that you can step in between maintain your plants whether that be pulling a few weeds here or there want to change some plants or you want to prune some plants back and that's what the great thing about the dirt locker also it's going to take me a long time to drape that wall versus with the dirt locker i already have some that are draping that will drape from the top and the plants that i put in the front will cover that and it's already dirt color so to me it's already pleasing to the eye as is and as you can see can easily walk down

Channel: Dirt Locker®

Views: 236,148

Keywords: hillside terracing, slope landscaping, corner slope, terrace hillside, grow on hillsides, plant on slope, hillside errosion, hillside landscaping, Landscaping on a Hill, Installing a Retaining Wall, sloped landscape, erosion control on slopes, dirt locker, sloped backyard ideas, retaining wall landscaping, hillside landscaping ideas, slope landscaping ideas, terracing a hillside, retaining wall ideas, gardening ideas for backyard, gardening ideas for beginners

Id: r8BM0FUuqDo

Length: 7min 10sec (430 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 03 2021