As you exit the house onto the patio, it's concrete. Then there's an 18-inch strip of gravel, then a two-course retaining wall of concrete blocks, then the flat grass (not very much of it), then a taller cedar retaining wall. Stepping "up" onto the grass always felt awkward. But the puppies liked it. 
We decided a better layout would be to have the concrete patio transition smoothly onto a flat back yard with no step "up". In order to get rid of all the extra dirt we'd have, AND because the cedar retaining wall wasn't pressure-treated lumber, we decided we'd build a new concrete retaining wall in front of the cedar wall.
The first step was to dig a big trench to receive the blocks for the retaining wall. In some places, it was 3 feet deep! The puppies LOVED running through the channel chasing each other. At times, they even helped dig. 
Then we laid several courses of concrete blocks (let me tell you, we had 6 PALLETS of these things!) and it required a lot of trial and error to get it right. (The wife was a bit of a stickler for having the seams come out staggered).THEN we had to chip and shovel all that dirt from in front of the wall to behind the wall. It wouldn't all fit, so it got wheeled off to several nether parts of the yard as well. The puppies were less helpful with this phase.
The next step is picking a hardscape material for the expanded back patio. We're going with hardscape since it's the north side of the house, and close to the house, so not much will grow. We always had trouble keeping the grass alive in the shade and neither of us really like grass, so buh-bye grass.
That pretty much leaves us picking a hardscape material that will allow us to put out some lounge chairs and enjoy our new raised bed behind the retaining wall. What do you think?
