Stone Terrace Escape: A hillside retaining wall and terrace build

The Brief

Coldstream sits in the hills above Kalamalka Lake, and a lot of the residential lots here inherited the grading of the orchards that used to cover this land — sweeping slopes that make a flat backyard the exception rather than the rule. Homeowners on properties like this typically come to us wanting the same thing: turn an unusable grade into a series of level, livable outdoor rooms without losing the lake and valley views that make the address worth having. For a project like this, that means terracing the slope with natural stone rather than fighting it with wholesale excavation, plus safe, properly engineered retaining that can carry planting beds and foot traffic between levels.

The Approach

Hillside lots around Coldstream and Kalamalka Lake often carry grades steep enough that a single retaining wall isn’t the answer — a stepped, tiered system reads better visually and spreads the load more forgivingly than one tall wall. In the Okanagan, that also means designing to local frost depth and, once a wall climbs past a certain height, working from an engineered plan with proper footings and geogrid reinforcement behind the wall face. We favour a terraced layout here: a lower wall to reclaim the first level of usable yard, a stone stairway connecting up to a second terrace, and drainage built into every course so freeze-thaw cycles don’t heave the stone over time. It’s the same grade-first thinking we bring to any sloped Coldstream property, whether the goal is a garden terrace, a patio pad, or simply a yard that stops sliding downhill.

What We Built

The retaining system uses a natural stone-faced wall built in tiers rather than one continuous run, with each level backfilled and compacted before the next course goes up. Stone steps tie the terraces together and echo the wall material so the whole slope reads as one composition instead of a patchwork of fixes. Planting beds sit behind each wall face, giving the terraces room for drought-tolerant, Okanagan-appropriate planting once the hardscape is in, and a stone pathway threads through the levels so the space is as walkable as it is good to look at.

If you’re dealing with a sloped lot of your own, our Retaining Walls page covers how we approach engineered, tiered stone systems, and our Paver Pathways & Walkways page covers the steps and paths that tie terraced levels together. See more of our work in and around Coldstream on the Coldstream location page, or browse the full project gallery for more Okanagan builds.