Ground & Grade is an independent publication about the work that happens outside the house — retaining walls, drainage, driveways, fences, trees and the ground they all sit on. It is written for people who own a section with a problem on it and want to understand that problem before they spend money on it.
The ground, and everything standing on it
Slopes, soils, water, wind, and the boundary rules that constrain what you can do about any of them. Most of the material comes from people who make a living at it — wall builders, drainlayers, arborists, earthworks foremen, site inspectors — together with owners who already paid for the expensive version of the lesson.
Ground here is anything but uniform. A wall that is routine work on flat Waikato peat becomes a different job on a Wellington hillside, and different again on Canterbury gravels or Otago loess. Where a piece is specific to a region, it says which one.
Who writes these pieces
Each article is written in the first person by someone who has done the work being described. Costs appear as defensible ranges in New Zealand dollars, taken from recent quoting in the region concerned. They will be wrong for your particular section, and that is expected — their job is to let a reader judge whether a quote sits in the right universe.
No individuals, firms or qualifications are named anywhere on the site. That is a deliberate choice: what is worth reading here is the reasoning, and an endorsement would only get in its way.
Where this site stops
Nothing is built, quoted or arranged from this address, no directory is operated, and no payment is taken for a mention. Where an article refers to a category of trade, it is describing who normally handles that work, not making a referral.
Engineering, planning and legal questions are also outside it. Where consents, boundaries or structural matters come up, an article sets out the general position and points at the kind of professional who can issue a determination for your own property. Requirements differ between councils and district plans, and they move.