Buyers often expect a “view” when they purchase property in Westlake and Lakeway. With good reason, it’s one of the many perks that come with living in the Hill Country. But buildable lots with big hillsides come with some serious challenges.
Westlake geography means difficult terrain that complicates backyard projects. From the rocky ridges of Bee Cave to the sprawling lakeside acreage in Spicewood, steep slopes, cedar eyesores, and caliche-filled soil are common obstacles. Until now.
Why can’t you use all that slope for entertaining? Why does all that soil wash away in a rainstorm? You didn’t pay for a hill, you paid for a lot. Don’t let the natural elevation limit your backyard potential.
Here at Blazek Landscapes, we see things differently. A hill is simply an opportunity to add architectural interest and design depth to your yard. We don’t believe in “building” retaining walls to “hold back dirt.” We work with Mother Nature to design and build beautiful spaces that make your hillside the most functional and attractive area of your yard.
Engineering Meets Art: The Blazek Approach
Safety First
Goodlooking walls start with great engineering. Any retaining wall has forces acting against it that the average homeowner just doesn’t consider: hydrostatic pressure from below, soil movement and loads, expansive clay soils that we have plenty of here in the Austin Hill Country. If you spec a wall incorrectly, it may look okay, but it will eventually fail and often very dramatically when subjected to heavy rainfall.
That’s why every project we take on at Blazek starts with a proper site visit. We discuss soil type, drainage needs, grade percentages, and loads to help us determine proper structural design. Only after we have the engineering portion of your project worked out do we talk about aesthetics. Professional engineering isn’t something we offer as an upsell. It’s part of every job.
Materials
The material you choose can set the tone for your entire outdoor space. Here in Westlake and Lakeway, we work with several different materials based on the architectural style of your home and your vision as a homeowner:
- Native Limestone: A Tried-and-True Hill Country Classic. Quarried locally, limestone retaining walls will meld seamlessly with your outdoor environment and gracefully weather with time. Traditional. Modern. Works with anything. When you don’t want your retaining wall to look like a retaining wall, build it with limestone.
- Modern Concrete and Steel: Westlake’s trendy new builds are reshaping our neighborhood’s landscape. Board-formed concrete retaining walls with a thin face profile create crisp edges and a striking architectural statement. Pair with weathering-steel accents to warm up the design while maintaining that modern feel. Choose materials that allow you to build cantilevered seat walls, incorporate discreet lighting, and create crisp geometric terraces that photograph flawlessly.
- Timber and Boulder: Blend in with the Landscape. If your goal is to make your hardscaping disappear altogether, nothing does it quite like dry-stack boulders and weathered timber. Perfect for giving your sloped yard an earthy feel.
Design Inspiration #1: The “Living” Terrace
The biggest complaint we hear about steep-slope terracing is bulk. Rows of straight, towering retaining walls make a backyard feel closed off and industrial. Our Living Terrace concept addresses that concern by removing visual mass wherever possible. The tiered “green zones” are planted shelves built right into the wall.
Think of it like this: Instead of one big wall looming eight or ten feet tall, how about three or four shorter walls stepping back from each other? We tuck planting beds into the resulting notches, then fill them with native Texas plants that spill over and soften each level. The result is dramatic layering and visual texture that highlights your plants.
We especially love to work with these Texas toughies on tiered beds:
- Top tiered plantings of Agave and Yucca create drama with interesting shape and silhouette.
- Muhly Grass turns fiery pink-purple color in the fall and flows effortlessly in the wind.
- Autumn Sage and Black-Eyed Susan add seasonal color while requiring minimal watering.
- Texas Mountain Laurel produces fragrant grape smelling flowers every spring and is evergreen all year.
Instead of having a barren wall at the base of their house, this client chose to create a “living” terrace. A vertical garden that actually gets more beautiful as time goes on and the plants spread.
Design Inspiration #2: The “Social” Slope (Multi-Level Living)
If the Living Terrace softens a slope, the Social Slope activates it. Instead of seeing each terrace as excess land, this concept treats each flat “shelf” as a room unto itself. A room with intent, character, and reason to exist.
On a Lakeway or Spicewood property with lake views, this might look like:
- Picture a mid-level fire pit terrace optimized for views of the water below. Low limestone seat walls help define the space. The built-in gas fire means this space is functional for 9 months out of the year. It’s where you’ll end up each evening after dinner, a cocktail in hand, watching the fire of sunset melt over the lake.
- Picture an upper-level dining terrace connected to the home’s main living level. Think pergola or shade structure to extend your indoor dining room experience out into nature.
- Secret garden” paths that take you from one level to another. Stairs are functional. Wide, gently graded stone that unifies the space and makes it easy to get around. But it’s the clever planting up and down those stairs; textured rosemary you can rub between your fingers, soft sweeps of ornamental grasses, evening blooming jasmine fragrant in the night, these are what turn a simple trip between levels into a journey of its own. Children discover magical nooks. Guests won’t stop talking about them after they leave.
When we approach design with the Social Slope mindset, we completely reframe the question. No longer is it, “What do we do with this hill?” Instead, we ask, “How many destinations can we create on this hill?” The answer tends to surprise most homeowners who had previously written off the back half their yard.
Design Inspiration #3: The “Disappearing” Wall
Occasionally, the best design solution is no design at all. By using natural boulder stacking, following the contour of a space with our layout, and incorporating strategic planting, we can design retaining walls that feel less like construction and more like erosion. The objective? A landscape that feels like it was always meant to look like this, as though the earth simply pooled into these various forms over time.
Native rock, large limestone boulders commonly found protruding through the soil across the Hill Country, are strategically placed to accent the natural slopes and angles of your land instead of resisting them. Speaking of water, one of our favorite ways to amplify this look is by incorporating water features into your wall design. A small spill-over fountain or a recirculating waterfall adds sound and movement to your landscape design, providing a refreshing sensory experience that helps balance the Texas heat.
Winning With Westlake and Lakeway
Drainage Is King
The most beautiful terrace can’t survive a Texas downpour without a solid drainage plan. Central Texas storms are measured in inches per hour, not hours per inch. When storms come, they come hard and fast. If your terrace system isn’t designed to handle that amount of water, it will fail.
With every Blazek terracing project, we design a drainage plan that covers every square inch of your lot. Our terraces are graded to pull water away from your home’s foundation. We incorporate French drains and gravel beds behind retaining walls to alleviate hydrostatic pressure before it can build. We use catch basins at critical points to intercept surface flow and convey it to outlet channels that direct water off of your property and onto City storm drains without causing erosion on adjacent properties.
We service Westlake and Lakeway so often that we have a good idea of where water tends to flow when it rains hard in our area. Our custom drainage solutions work with those patterns instead of against them. That’s why our walls don’t fall over and our terraces don’t wash out when hardcore Central Texas storms hit.
Permitting & HOAs
Unless your wall is below a specific height, you will need permits from either the City of Austin, City of Lakeway, or Travis County (depending on where your property is located). Westlake and Lakeway also have several HOAs with architectural review guidelines your project must adhere to. Between permits and HOAs, there can be a lot of red tape to cut through before your project can even start.
We’ve been navigating the permitting process and HOA submissions for Westlake and Lakeway properties for years and can help guide you through the process.
Claiming Your Square Footage Back
You never know how amazing good terracing can transform your land until you see it for yourself. One day, you have a slope that provides you with nothing but maintenance issues. Worrying about mowing. Worrying about erosion. Dead space. Next, you have your home’s signature outdoor room. Your hodgepodge hill becomes the fire pit terrace where your family spends every Friday night. Your eroding backyard embankment turns into a tiered waterfall surrounded by native wildflowers. Your dead zone becomes your favorite room.
That’s the transformation we strive for with every terracing project. Not just a functional outdoor living space, but an outdoor living space with personality, with function, and with that Blazek quality that will increase your property value for years to come, right here in one of Austin’s most coveted zip codes.
So ready to level up your outdoor space? Give Blazek Landscapes a call today to set up a site visit. We’ll stroll your property, take a look at the slope, and let you know exactly what can be done. Because that perfect view you’re searching for in Bee Cave or Lakeway might already be literally right outside your back door. You just haven’t built it yet.
