landscaping a hill

[mwnjw]

We live in southern california, and my backyard is largely a hill that backs up to a concrete wall. It's a mess! It has a 3 trees (2 lemons), a hugely overgrown juniper bush, a runaway boysenberry patch, and lots of weeds.

I pulled out a lot of the overgrowth and ground cover last summer, but now I just have a mud slide. How do you landscape a muddy hill like this? Any suggestions on shrubs or ground cover?

Thanks a bunch!

[born2late]

I have seen yards like yours done with terracing. Since it slopes you need to break it up into sections and possibly put in retaining wall areas. You needed those ground covers to hold the top soil from washing into mudslides. Sit down and draw your backyard out on grid paper. Then figure out what you want to have in there. If you want a sitting place consider putting in a covered deck area. If you want a water fall and a pond this is the time to plan for it.You can also put in a dry creek bed at this stage. Plan for walkways. You may have to build wooden step platforms and integrate them with stepping stones. The library has wonderful books on landscaping such a yard as yours. Go talk to the people at your local nursery and ask them about what kinds of ground covers and such grow well in your area. Lay out areas you can go ahead and plant now and keep in mind future projects that you may have to wait to pay for as you can. If this sounds daunting there is the alternative of getting with a landcaper designer and having them come look at your yard and work up a plan that you can put into action as finances permit. This would be more costly but they are very knowledgable about what will work and what wont. I hope this helps. I have seen yards like you describe done on TV. It was so beautiful with different levels of decking scattered down the slope. Each deck area served a different purpose.

[catlady101]

I am facing a different hill. it goes up and levels off and it is in the front of my house. I used to have it landscaped with low spreading junipers until one year most of them up and died.
I have kept errosion to a minimum by using landscape fabric and mulch until I had the money to fix it up right.
Mine is in partial shade to afternoon sun....I have replaced the wood border with landscape wall bricks, This year I am sort of terracing it with field stone and will be planting a mixture of summer bulbs, perrenials and in the fall I will plant spring flowering bulbs. Along the bottom edge I will be using a ground cover called sedum...any low growing, ground cover would do but I got 12 plants on sale.
Since your sounds very shady I would try shade loving perrennials, maybe the use of garden fabric will help deter weeds and of course as generous use of mulch will help too. since there was so much back there and so many weed seeds to boot I would try not to turn the ground up too much and add top soil if needed. You know all the planting does not have to be done this year....I did a barron area about 10 years ago that looks just great now....it took a few years but it was worth the wait. Also look in your established landscaping for plants that need to be divided and use the "baby" plants to help fill in, in a year or two you will never know the diff.
Good Luck!


His will be done!

[Redbud15]

You certainly did need that ground cover! The two previous posts gave some good ideas: use landscape cloth to stabilize the slope until new plants take root, terracing can be a good option, & a slope is perfect for a waterfall. You should be able to find lots of landscaping books at your library. Look for resources on native & naturalized plants. Growing plants that like your area will greatly reduce maintenance later on. Planting natives also encourages wildlife (like birds, butterflies, & frogs) to your yard. You should also be able to get information on plants good for slopes from your county extension agent. I think you probably know that lawn grass is not a good choice--don't plant anything that needs mowing! Happy slope-scaping!