They wanted a deck. I priced several decks and they went with the retaining wall version...We built a retaining wall to frame in the deck footprint that we wanted then we filled the deck area with roadbase. and put down pavers and gravel. Then we created two patio areas in the yard with bed spaces around them. we also created a creek for water runoff as this yard was used to chanel water from the neighborhood to a holding pond behind. We used a lot of rock dug out from the yard to line the swale and put boulders dug out from the yard into the landscape. The plantings were chosen for a french provencial look of lavendars and white flowers with a touch of light pink...