Landscaping Sloping Land

Landscaping is the best way to beautify your home and keep as much of its natural landform and structure. If you are living on a hillside and wanted to have steps running up to your home, then steep hill landscaping is the answer.

Though this can be very challenging for some landscapers and homeowners due to rainfall and the possibility of erosion, still you can manage to accomplish a good hill landscaping by following some important points.

For this kind of landscaping, you will need to put a wall which will serve as retainer. This is necessary if your steep hill isn’t made out of rock. This is necessary so as to keep the hill solid and be able to survive many years of rainfall and erosion. But don’t be excited! The construction of your home may change the density and placement of things. Once you fail to deal with hill side landscaping, you will end up with erosion problems. Usually, novice’s attempts to landscape their hillside often finishes with time and money wasted.

So, before you begin, read these following tips for landscaping steep hills and slopes.

•Retaining a wall for steep hill landscaping

A retaining wall is a structure that helps to prevent erosion of soil, rocks, and plants from a steep incline. This is highly recommended for landscaping steep hill to avoid accidents and injuries. The wall needs to be several feet higher than the level of your soil. This is necessary so that in case there is downslide, the accumulated soil or mud will not easily overflow. This also prevents you from any liability in case of a landslide from your hill.

• A way up to the hill

It is good to have steps or pathway that is paved going up the steep hill. This is a sound suggestion when landscaping steep hills as this can prevent erosion while giving you access up and down the hill. For some, a curved pathway is more favorable compared to steps since it allows easier transport of things up and down the steep hill.

• Plants for steep hill landscaping

Building terraces on your hillside greatly prevents any downslide of soil but you may change the hillside a bit to make way for the terraces. Putting up terraces may take some work and planning. They can be built shallow or deep but make sure to make allowances so that there is enough space for you to walk around them when you start planting. You can plant big trees at the start of the downward slope. Below are some plants you can consider planting:

1. Juniper plant for hillside landscaping

If you are looking for plant options that can be used in landscaping slopes, Junipers should be on top of your priority. Blue Rug Juniper as well as its varieties is a sturdy plant which could serve as ground coverings for slopes. Using these plants can also control erosions and growth of weeds. This also helps you minimize mowing steep slopes.

2. Hill Landscaping using Pachysandra

This plant, which is also known as Japanese Pachysandra is also popular as ground coverings for shaded slopes. These are flowering plants that are primarily grown for its foliage. These will surely polish your steep hill landscaping.

3. Creeping Phlox plants

Creeping Phlox plants are good groundcovers for a slight slope in a sunny area with well-drained soil that are rich in humus. These plants can also prevent erosions plus it can beautify your hillside. Phlox plants bloom continuously in spring and using these in your steep hill landscaping will give you optimal opportunity to showoff its beauty.

Editor
Peter Charalambos