Brighteyes -I love your gorgeous woodsy neighborhood. That slope looks like a lot of ground to hold. My thought would be to plant (thickly - not just little scraps) a groundcover that works well in your area. Here in southern Indiana I love vinca minor, pachysandra, or ivy. They all grow in shade or quite a bit of sun and they look good all winter too. They aren't too original but they sure do their job. the trick to me is planting the ground cover like sod so you don't have to wait forever for the effect. Of course this means having a friend you can dig this "sod" from.

THEN, I would concentrate on making some tufa walls or sculptures or fake rocks or whatever you like.

Is the concrete area in the front of the photo a sidewalk or a street?
Probably real tufa makers will have better ideas!

Laura

I had a great idea bookmarked but can't find it now. Someone made troughs in different sizes and kind of dug them into the landscape and then tufa'd around them in layers. It really looks better than it I make it sound. Then plants can be started in the troughs. I wish I could find it!
Paws

See if this gives you any ideas.

Here is a link that might be useful: 'tufa on a slope

Wow. Those photos of tufa planters are great. I would hate to put plants in them since they look so good alone and the plants would soon hide all the tufa. I think the design would make a great path for water to flow over and be recirculated - sort of like a fountain on a slope. No doubt that would be a nightmare to design and make work.
Laura

Thanks for the quick responses.

I saw that site before, dont know if i could design it either. The slope goes to a ditch and then up to the road. no sidewalks here. I have tried planting on the slope but it is pretty much fill dirt and everywhere you dig ends up in the ditch. I do have some daylillies that are coming back. wasnt sure they would since they died right after i transplanted them. and most of the dirt washed away.

What i was thinking was doing small retainers in various places to hold a little dirt. I dont want to do a big one. Maybe to just make a few planting pockets. Might have to see if i can figure something like on that site. But dont know if i can plan something on that big of a scale. lol

Carey

You can do wonderful things with broken chunks of sidewalk.
Dig a trench for your wall, stand the broken chunks in the trench side by side on end forming a wall.
Then coat the chunks above the ground with tufa to make them look like stones or whatever.
It usually very easy to find a pile of broken concrete chunks in any city or town. They might even deliver them to you for free.

You could combine both ideas - make some containers - hypertufa type - to hold the dirt into which you can plant those suggested groundcovers. I have all 3 and here in WA state, the Vinca would be the fastest growing. Personally, I would work toward the plants actually filling in all the empty places - but I do understand your need to have something to hold the roots in place. As the covers grow out, and as you have lessened the slope slippage, those plants will be able to establish themselves outside the HT planters. Make sense? I also use St. John's Wort (Hypericum) as a nice freely spreading ground cover. Lovely early summer floral display.

If you want to go for a ground cover, here is how I am planting 160' of slope that surrounds my yard. The slope varies from about 45º to 80º. I am working on it slowy section by section. First I cut the grass/weeds very short, layer on newspaper, farmpost, and then burlap that I pin down with the pins used for sod. I top it off with more farmpost. I have one row of brick edger at the bottom that helps to hold the last layer from crossing the sidewalk.

To plant my ground cover I cut the smallest slit I can in the burlap, put the plant in and then tuck the burlap back in around it. Because of the steep slope I am limited to plants under 8". Anything taller lays down.

The burlap turns into compost in about 2 years. The first plants that I put in 5 years ago get split up to start the next section of hill. If I had the money and energy to do it all the rest at once I would, but I don't have either. Although at this point I don't need to buy nearly as many plants as I did at first. I should be done in 2 or 3 more years. Our yard is between 8 and 12 feet above the sidewalk so it is a lot of space.

After reading this post I think I will start to incoporate tufa in as well. I will probably make sculptures and rocks.

Pauline

Thats the one nmgirl!!
Paws

Thanks guys, love all the ideas. wannadance, your idea probly would work the best. combinding the two would do the job. Gotta do something im loosing more and more of it every spring. and ive only been here 2 years lol.

Carey

Great ideas here!

Another thing to think about is that where the tops of the troughs (or whatever you use in the end) can be used as display areas for smaller pots, sculptures, interesting stones, what-have-you.

You mentioned the hypertufa hill as being too big to plan. I hear you. But look again. That hill is basically the same size trough being placed side by side as well as terraced. It's truly a simple form.

With your steep drop, you could have quite a dramatic hill!

Best of luck!

Brighteyes, I can just imagine beautiful possibilities--a cottage garden area, Japanese garden, a stone garden with stone paths and walkup.... I had a similar area in my yard at one time and tied it back with one row of railroad ties (not so crazy about those anymore though) and later used some precast stones to accentuate it.

I think that terracing the area immediately, with something/anything (stones, hypertufa terrace, hypertufa-faux stone surfaced cinder blocks, timbers,etc), and using some binding-type of mulch would help it not float away. Even though I'd only recommend it teporarily, you can use landscape fabric in a bag-type of terrace. Plant the excellent vines advised within that and possibly a few shrubs and later that will become your soil binder. I also noticed that your drainage pipe comes out of the timber wall into that area. Maybe that could be extended out to the street so you're not having to contend with it at this point--possibly a rock waterfall stream.

Have fun!

LOL lazydaisy i have been sitting here racking my brain trying to figure out where i have drainage coming out of the wall. That is a fiasco from the cable company.they left that there with wires hanging out and i have been trying to get them to take it out for over a year now. It does not go to anything. They had to rewire when they built the neighbors house cause they cut mine. And that was never takin up. would actually not mind it if water gushed out of it....:)

i tried to use a shredded mulch that usually holds together real good for me. nope washed away. I guess i outta tell ya too that the area of dirt is only 2-3 foot high. The picture makes it look bigger.

Still going through all my options. will definitly do somethin come spring.

carey

Carey

OMG sorry, I thought it was a PVC pipe coming out.

Somewhere in my collection of bookmarks I have a really cool alpine garden display. I bet you could create these hypertufa forms in more of a "rock" fashion instead of a wall, with some of the rocks having their own special niches to plant some specimen plants and the open areas with the vines. I'll keep you in mind when I'm reviewing the bookmarks again.