In my opinion gabbion baskets look ghastly, sorry. Can the designer not do something with stone? However, gabions are probably one of the cheaper options so a stone retaining wall will probably cost even more, but it will look a thousand times nicer.

I have never seen Gabion baskets used in private gardens before. I have seen them used to retain things such as river banks, sand banks and to stabilise roadsides.

Are you using them to flatten out your garden, terrace it or to prevent it moving? I can see how the stone inside them would look attractive architecturally.

I have a dip in my garden that I did think of using Gabion baskets to amend, but a retaining wall in brick is much cheaper and the volume of earth that it would support is not worth purchasing a basket for.

Just how steep is the slope of the garden and how large? I think terraces will look far better than gabion baskets. The owners of Kevock Nursery have a very steeply sloping garden and haven't used any retaining walls at all lots and lots of terraces and paths linking them together down the slopes copy and paste this link into your browser http://bit.ly/fW5O5Z and then click on the images on the right...

Not that this is very relevant, but our neighbour whose garden is 12' higher than ours, has gabion baskets and junk to build up his land so it's flat. Unfortunately the top soil is being pushed through the junk by the heavy rains we get. The whole lot is held up by sleepers which are rotting and beginning to lean our way. Doesn't bother me, I shall just charge him rent when his garden falls into mine. I probably wouldn't have thought of it, if he hadn't got the hump coz we wont sell him a plot of our land to extend his garden.
So beware if the baskets are being used to hold the soil up.