This guide answers one question for a Daleville, Virginia yard: if both a patio and a retaining wall are in the plan, which one has to happen first so the second does not tear the first apart. It is for homeowners who already know they want both, not for a general ranking of unrelated projects. The outcome is a sequence, a shared elevation, and a short list of photos that make the sequence obvious to a reviewer.
What does "first" mean when the wall and the patio share an elevation?
First means the work that, if skipped, makes the other piece wrong. If the patio can only be level because a wall holds the cut, the wall is first even when the pavers are the thing the household cares about. If the ground is already stable at the door and the wall is a later garden edge that does not support the patio, the patio can be first. The mistake is treating "first" as whichever item is more exciting.
Write the shared number in inches from a benchmark you can find again, usually the door threshold. The patio surface, the wall top, and the drain outlet should all be described from that same mark. Without it, two phases become two guesses.
When should the wall come before any pavers?
Put the wall first when the patio area is currently sloped or filled, when water runs through the future floor, or when the only flat ground would be created by the cut the wall holds. Also put it first when equipment for the wall would have to drive across the new patio. A finished paver field is a poor haul road.
The wall's own scope, drainage, and permit checks are on the retaining-wall preparation page. This article does not replace that page. It only decides the order.
When can the patio come first?
The patio can come first when a provider can see firm, stable soil at the elevation the door needs, and when a future wall would sit outside the patio rather than under its edge. In that case the patio phase should stop short of the future footing. Leave a strip of ground, not a concrete curb, where the wall's base will go. Mark that strip on the sketch.
A patio built first still has to drain. Do not pitch water into the strip reserved for the wall and then forget an outlet. The surface choices themselves are on the first-phase patio page.
Why does the local ground make the order matter?
Botetourt's design criteria, updated March 2024, list a 24-inch frost line, Severe weathering, and soil classes that include clays and silts. A wall backfilled with those soils and given no drain will move, and a patio tied to a moving wall will crack at the joint. Building the patio first on soft fill, then stacking a wall against it, loads a base that was never designed as a surcharge. The code exemption for some short walls does not apply when the wall supports a surcharge other than ordinary unbalanced fill. A patio, a drive, or a slope above the wall can be that surcharge. The exemption is in the Virginia Administrative Code, and the county requires the 2021 code for permits as of January 18, 2025. Confirm the reading with Development Services.
The comprehensive-plan chapter that maps much of the land around Daleville as 0 to 8 percent slope is not a substitute for a tape measure at the back door. Valley limestone, described in the same chapter, can also mean an abrupt soft spot. If a depression might be a sinkhole, do not bury it under either the wall or the patio without qualified help.
What should you hand a reviewer so the sequence is obvious?
Take one photo from the door looking at the low ground, and one from the low ground looking back. Measure the rise. Draw the patio rectangle and the wall line on the same sketch, and circle which one you believe holds the other up. Note where a machine would enter. Say whether anyone parks or walks above the future wall, because that is a surcharge question, not a style question.
Permit and floodplain checks that can change the sequence are collected on the Botetourt permits page. The home page is where the request starts.
Sources named on this page were read on October 9, 2026. An office can revise a rule after that date, so confirm the current text before anyone digs.