If you had a retaining tire wall.

Our finished floor level is lower than the ground level at the back of the house. As we discovered yesterday while studying plans. Also it’ll be very visible from our living room.

The floor level of my house is below ground level on one side of the house - the garden side.

I have no doors onto the garden at the moment...my kitchen extension will have doors onto the garden but they will open up onto a sunken patio - retaining wall all around...steps upto the garden. Not ideal but I was fed up with walking round the house to access the garden.

Have you looked at snow in summer? It's not a gorgeous plant by any means, but it's a mat forming perennial- it has silvery green foliage with masses of white flowers in Late Spring/Early Summer. Little maintenance other than cutting off what you don't want, trim the flowers off when they are dead. 
I stick it in my stone wall to fill gaps. It's drought tolerant. And that foliage is fab in the winter.
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One side of my house is below ground level too - my below ground bit is beneath the stair well, so I have an understairs cloakroom/loo.

Friends who built their own house on the side of a hill, cut away the soil outside the ground floor and put a retaining wall a few feet away, which gives them an outside patio, just wide enough for a couple of chairs and table facing the sunset.

My kitchen which used to be a washhouse and coal house is now joined to the house and is set into the bankside. I had to build a retaining wall between mysef and next door (to stop there patio from sliding onto my land)) and  a dry stone wall set into the bankside to allow me access to the rear of the house.

Luckily the brick retaining wall is only 1 metre high and the dry stone wall is even less. I will eventually train ivy or summat over the brick work and the dry stone wall looks OK as it is.

We have Snow in Summer, I have always loved it. Neglected yet gets on with growing happily x

How about ferns planted in your retaining wall and if you have a lot of stones in the ground as you excavate buy some gabion cages and use them as a retaining wall

If we have enough stone come out of the plot we’ll just have a drystone wall. From the digging we’ve already done, there’s very little stone. If we need a wall it’s only going to be between 3 & 4ft. We might just grade the ground back and not have a wall at all. It’s all very flexible and very difficult to visualise at the moment. We’ll have a better idea what there’s a big hole in the ground.

After watching that TV programme you had recommended and looking at the photo you posted I take it you are sheltered from the high winds

After watching that TV programme you had recommended and looking at the photo you posted I take it you are sheltered from the high winds

No not really. Depends which way they coming. Northerlies are evil.

If we have enough stone come out of the plot we’ll just have a drystone wall. From the digging we’ve already done, there’s very little stone. If we need a wall it’s only going to be between 3 & 4ft. We might just grade the ground back and not have a wall at all. It’s all very flexible and very difficult to visualise at the moment. We’ll have a better idea what there’s a big hole in the ground.

My house is built on very stony ground. While excavating a 4 foot wide area to give me a pathway to the rear of the house I uncovered enough stone to build a retaining wall. Its so stony, the house has no foundations and is built with brick. I live on a two directional slope and since the early forties when the house was built there has been no subsidence, which I am pleased about. I don't garden with a spade or fork, I use a pick!!!