A rear yard behind a Victorian house on a steep hill is transformed into a social arena, a low maintenance playground, and a bamboo lined garden path perimeter. Flanked on one side by the steep incline of the neighbor’s yard, we designed a retaining wall surrounding the arena playground of board-formed concrete topped with horizontal redwood boards. The arena floor is hand-troweled 4” thick concrete, scored in a pattern of triangles that intersect and form areas for hand-cut mosaic inlay patterns. A curved steel plate provides both visual focus and a back stop for soccer balls. The cantilevered circular bench was cast on site, scattered with blue glass and polished to a smooth finish.