I got your email, Louise - Sorry, I've been away at a bonsai show & visiting friends/family. This is a tough one. As I understand it, you have a concrete block planter constructed atop a concrete slab, with no way for the water to make its way into the sand below the slab. Drilling holes in the block walls won't improve drainage. The only 2 ways to effectively improve drainage would be to make sure there is a 'bridge' between the soil in the planter and the sand below the concrete so the water can percolate through the soil, or to make sure the soil you use is porous enough that it holds little or no perched water. This would mean that your soil particles would have to be large & stable, insofar as their structure is concerned. Even the soil you see me holding above would be inappropriate for your application because that soil depends on the wicking action of the earth (in RBs) to ensure it doesn't remain saturated after rain/watering. It looks great, but if you have high standards it would be a disaster in a container or in your app. I'm thinking that about an 80% fraction of a mix of all purpose sand and all purpose gravel and 10% each of pine bark fines and Michigan (reed/sedge) peat or good compost would probably be the direction I would head. In subsequent years, I think all you'll need to do is mulch with pine bark to keep the soil healthy. If expense isn't a major consideration, you could use Turface MVP as the base ingredient for your soil. Topsoil and fine sand just isn't going to drain w/o help. The alternative would be to remove the old soil and cut a hole in the slab so water can drain from the soil in the planter, but it would have to be a hole of considerable size - preferably at the lowest point on the planter's bottom. If you have pictures, it's possible that something else might be devised that will allow the water to move out of the soil via some sort of passive wicking mechanism that we/you could devise, but I'd have to see the application in order to envision the possibilities. There might be a way to employ a false bottom by placing FRP panel on top of cement blocks that are resting on the bottom & building it like a self-watering container in reverse - where you employ a wicking column of soil to REMOVE water instead of supplying it, but I don't know how far you want to chase the issue? ;-) AL

Hi..I own www.tileofluxury.com . the tiles you have are too thin to drive over..you need at least 1.5 inch thick tiles and then put in mortar over concrete. Here is a link that might be useful: tile of luxury

Thanks for the explanation, the steps came with the house. It looked ok when I purchased the house. Not so good a few years later. I have asked a few people to look at it, but most of them thought it was OK design, but I had my suspicions. You two are the first people who said otherwise, though I think you are probably correct. So the issue is that paver and concrete landing do not mix. Because one is inflexible and the other is flexible, the construction eventually comes apart? I am thinking that the previous owner had a concrete landing for steps and then decided to redo the patio with pavers (I can't tell what was there before, every neighbor seemed to have redone their porch, and added some brick steps to match. Instead of demolishing the steps and then creating a new one by laying down pavers, they simply put pavers around the existing steps, resulting in this horror? How would a proper step be constructed? I imagine you would step with no concrete steps and build the steps with layers of pavers? What would be the rough ballpark cost of redoing this as a paver step vs pouring out another concrete step by a contractor (is this a $1K, $5k, $10K, etc)? I am mostly interested so I can budget the money for the future project? Paul

Put a few retaining walls, nice steps to the back yard and few short columns of flower boxes with some sitting area between them and you will have a beautiful raised patio. There are many ways of doing this best way to get a local landscaping company specializing in hardscape designs and based on your budget they will put something together for you. Here is a few examples just to give you an idea what you can do Good luck