If you’re looking to reshape the contours of a sloped property so you can have flat areas for patios and lawns, you’ll need a retaining wall. They may be landscaping workhorses, but retaining walls can be imaginative contributors to your curb appeal. Along with sloped landscapes where water runoff causes hillside erosion, ideal locations for a retaining wall include spots downhill from soil fault lines and where the downhill side of a foundation is losing supporting soil or its uphill side is under pressure from sliding soil.  Sure, retaining walls look like simple stacked stone, block, or timber. But in fact, they’re carefully engineered systems that wage an ongoing battle with gravity. They restrain tons of saturated soil that would otherwise slump and slide away from a foundation or damage the surrounding landscape. These handsome barriers also make inviting spots to sit, and can increase usable yard space by terracing sloped properties, something that is increasingly important as flat home sites become ever more scarce in many regions.