This house had a vast backyard. So big that we referred to it as “the back 40,” rancher-style. There was one problem. (Okay, there was more than one.)

It was totally useless — a steep, root-strewn hillside. And when I say root-strewn, I mean some of those bulging roots were four feet in diameter, and definitely not attached to trees. Oh yes, there were also stumps — a great many of them, from trees hastily executed by the prior owner. A very large and dilapidated evergreen, no doubt planted as an adorable seedling, was banging against the upstairs siding, and for fire safety would have to be removed.

What to do? The goal was to create a flat play area, a patio, a wooden dining deck that could eventually hold a hot tub, and to fence everything off for the dog and my clients’ young son.

At the front off the house, the not-very-hospitable entry point was a steep set of slippery brick stairs. People had already fallen on them.

Did I mention that the entire property was covered in foot-deep ivy, at least 60 generations of it, in which rodents were making their homes?

The first job was to get the dangerous tree out of there, so I called my favorite tree removal company. They dragged a chipper down all those slippery stairs to The Back 40 — and laboriously, the tree and the stumps were removed from the hillside.

Next, we brought in a team to build retaining walls — two of them, across the breadth of the yard — a good 50 feet across. (If I’m making this sound easy, it wasn’t, especially in the middle of winter rains. But — if you want a reasonable deal on excellent hardscape, you have to do it in the winter. In April, prices double.)

My very good friend Juan and his partner Pedro got to work building the patio. Brick appears here and there in the exterior of the house, so I designed a patio that integrated bricks with cement pavers, to really good effect. (Applause, please…) The house is rustic in feel, so I decided to go all the way with galvanized metal. Luis built the planters and the shed, and I love the look. The redwood deck went in next, with plenty of heavy duty beams underneath, to support the eventual hot tub.

We selected galvanized hog wire — modern, not a fortune, and really good looking — for all the many railings, including the flat area between the two retaining walls. I believe that a neighbor inquired whether pigs or cattle were on the way.

That flat area is plenty big for a peewee soccer match and a climbing structure. We planted Kurapia, a low-growing ground cover from Japan that is supposedly very tough and needs little water. The jury’s still out on that choice, but in general, I don’t like synthetic grass because of its impact of a gigantic, non-recyclable plastic blanket on the environment. The back of this house gets hit with full sun in the summer, and synthetic grass would also be very hot. But we will see — the Kurapia has not done as well as I hoped it would.

Remember those stairs? Something had to be done. We semi-seriously considered putting in a slide, the angle was so steep. But ultimately, we chose to tear out the brick, and replace it with a beautiful, broad set of redwood-board steps. We extended the angle of the run, and my hardscape team went to work. Redwood can also get slippery, so in keeping with the metal-and-wood scheme, we installed step lights and non-slip metal strips at the edge of each step. These have been brilliantly successful. I really didn’t know how great these stairs would look, and how useful they’d be, until the project was completed. One feels that one should really make an entrance.

Planting was next, of course — and we were starting from scratch. My very best landscaper, Alfredo, stepped in at that point, and we brought in a couple of truckloads of plants from my favorite wholesale nursery. (To the trade only, and far less costly than HD, if you’re ordering enough.)

Spring came, and then summer — and the little plants are now huge and gorgeous. The view is killer. We turned something ugly into something amazing — and that always makes me feel like a million bucks. (But I don’t charge that much.)