Driveway retaining wall ideas and plans

I'm turning my attention to my driveway retaining wall this summer since the wooden landscape timbers are well past their prime and rotting away.  I am planning to do this retaining wall out of stone to match the others in the yard.

I want to incorporate some functional features as well as some to add visual interest to the retaining wall itself.  Some of the features that I would like are a garbage bin storage area, a bench, and a small storage shed.  I also plan to add some additional parking space for a motorcycle and an integrated wall fountain feature.

So with this in mind, I made up a rough layout idea sketch in Sketchup.

I then ripped out a section of the rotted landscape timbers and did some test digging to see how far back I could go into the hill before I ran up against the sprinkler system pipes.

I then found a good area to put the fountain feature in the retaining wall.  This sparked a few ideas for re-using a concrete panel I had cast as part of a mailbox pillar a few years back.  I brought the panel out and drilled it with the hammer drill to accept the fountain spout.  I will set it in as a part of the first portion of the stone wall.

Here you can see a bolt sticking through the panel where the future spout will go.  I will likely put some kind of decorative medallion on with the spout sticking through.  It will also need a catch basin at some point too.

In the meantime, I have plenty of excavation and rock work to get started on!  More updates on this project to come.