Thank you for all the replies and the various links. I have done much of the drainage around the house myself so I have a fair idea of what I need to do in the garden area. I still have a couple of questions

a. As things stand the area is covered with a mix of weeds and garden plants (the place used to be somebody's garden). Given that I will be backfilling to a height of around 0.8m and then putting top soil do I need to destroy the weeds first or can I simply rely on them being smothered by the backfill - I have already used this material for my driveway and know that weeds don't like it much.

b. One of the things I have considered doing on the embankment is making a mini vineyard. I live not too far from the Moselle (really good Luxemburgeois white wine) and I have noticed that many of the gardens in the village have vines. On the Moselle I have noted that the vines are planted on really steep slopes.

I do have a fair bit of earth moving to do. By estimates around 10 cubic meters of backfill and then 18 cubic meters of top soil - all to be done with a Kubota mini excavator given that access to the garden is limited to a width of around 1.5m.

It is going to be mid to late September by the time I finish all this so not much chance of doing any gardening this year. What would be the best thing to do between then and the Srping of next year?

I should mention that garden is oriented NE-SW. The embankment is at the rear of the garden and is exposed to bright sunshine pretty much all the time when there is no cloud cover. The other half of the "garden" gets around 2-4h of sunshine before it finds itself in the shade of the house itself.

Thank you for the link to the "Lasagne" site. As someone else pointed out given the volume I need to cover it is not practicable but I will be able to put the information to good use later.