Gardening on Slopes
You want to garden there.
The traditional way to garden on slopes is to terrace the slope. Build a wall across the slope and backfill by pulling the hill down to the wall.
This gives you a traversing garden across the slope where you can build large areas (sitting areas) as well as smaller areas for planting flowers.
With these kinds of flower beds, you can grow anything you like.
Garden But No terraces.
You want to garden there but you don't want to go to the trouble/expense of terracing or building beds. Again we have options.
Ground covers:
We can use a great many plants as ground covers when we talk about gardening on slopes, they don't have to be ground covers. A low spreading Juniper does just as good a job of holding a bank against erosion as almost any groundcover. It simply doesn't grow as quickly as they do.
Perennial Gardens:
Perennials fit the same bill as any other plant (see above). Plant them thickly enough and they'll give you a groundcover effect. There are fast-establishing perennials and slower ones.
Tough to garden on a steep slope with annuals or vegetables; if you're thinking these kind of plants then build some terraces.
Controlling weeds on slopes is the same as controlling them in flat prairie gardens.
Plant Choices
Folks - you can grow any kind of plant on a slope that grows on the flat. There isn't a "best" perennial for slopes. The plants won't care. :-)
The deal though is that you want low-maintenance perennials that fight off grasses. So go with tall plants (Monarda) that are tough and taller than most weeds or plants such as Hemerocallis (daylilies) that are not only tough and as tall as grass but the leaves look a bit grass-like. This hides the grass blades among the plants.
Or grow grasses - and let them duke it out with the weeds; they'll do much better than most perennials if you get the taller Miscanthus types.
You don't want to garden there.
You don't want to garden on the slope but you don't want it to grow to weeds either. At this point, you do have several choices.
Groundcovers
You can plant something that will slowly colonize the area and compete with the grass and weeds. Some ornamental grasses are perfect for this; they'll grow like stink as well as outcompete the shorter grass and weeds. Daylilies are another of the good plants for this kind of weed competition.
No dwarf groundcover will outcompete taller grasses.
What about wildflowers?
I get this question all the time. There's no difference between wildlfowers on a slope and those on a flat field. Tough and expensive to get them properly established in an urban setting and they do require maintenance.
Mow it.
It's too Steep To Mow.
Shrub and Tree it
Plant trees or large shrubs or preferably both; create an urban forest. I'm a big fan of planting lots of evergreens and mulching heavily. One weeding in the late spring a year and your bed is pretty much set for the summer. (yeah, you'll have the odd weed in there but hey, it's a garden) :-)
The Last Question I Get...
Look - I just want a no-work solution to this stupid slope - I don't want to mow it or plant it.
Doug says - pave it or move to an apartment building and let somebody else have this problem.
Click here to ask Doug about gardening on slopes.
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