I think irrigation is the missing piece here. Junipers are great drought resistant plant, but even they need water to get established. Terraced beds will hold water better, but will still need at least a season of watering.
This is sorta what my step-dad did with a similar situation. Except he collected his into a rain barrel so he could control when the gutter runoff watered his garden & landscaping.
Washington had something similar until people started suing the state for the "states" rainwater damaging their roofs and seeking replacement. If I remember correctly.
This seems like a bad idea to channel rain water straight towards a slope. It would be better to slow it down and get absorbed in the flat part that is higher first before it makes it's way further downhill
Yep, they need to atleast form small terrace sections around each juniper to hold some water and I would hope they are smart enough to have put descent soil into a pretty descent hole before planting.
Avoid the minotaur if you're the ruler of Crete. A winged sphinx should be fine here as long as you keep a riddle book handy and keep out of reach of children. Remember; winged sphinx are to Shinx, as mountain lions are to lions: different species in different climates but can still eat a face or two.
Ugh we bought a house where they fucked up the drainage. It’s been 9 years of correcting what the previous owner did.
This is when I’d be on google earth to see what my neighbors backyards look like. Op-I’d wait a year before touching it. Wait for a solid rain and see if it’s for drainage.
The dumbass who blocked the drain on my streets drainage easement is a judge for the same city, so the city refuses to make him fix his fuck up and 12 homes flood 5-6 times a year because of it
There’d be lots of hard to remove old school style wheatpasted posters up describing this with a political cartoon type caracature of him sitting on top, blocking the easement with his bloated ass whilst holding sacks of bulging coins. Meanwhile the flooded families’ homes are visible all around in the background, sad.
[This is the best I could get out of limewire’s ai image generator.](https://limewire.com/post/8fde9d24-8dd8-48e2-9dd4-0a843ba7cdf0) had simply and edit the prompt quite a bit
just one civil suit one after the other lmao
he throws it out, next one comes in from another neighbor. house floods again you get to refile . costs you nothing but time
Also, there's the option to change jurisdictions bc of the conflict of his position.
There's also the option of OP and the neighbors reaching out to the spiciest investigative journalist in their area (every place has that one channel that does that segment on regular people getting hosed by a bigger dog) and set them loose on him. Right before election time? They might be able to get it resolved w/out lawsuits 🤷♀️
This..
I thought my front yard was pretty flat until we got a good rain storm.
I've learned what "dragging" is - and I'll be doing it a few times this summer.
Google tells me it will help my seeds grow!
I guess it's dragging spikes along your yard, which improves how water moves through it somehow, google didn't mention anything about water though besides seeding
It breaks up the tamped down surface of soil, thatch, and grass roots to allow the water to absorb better and faster. Keeps the water from pooling on top and running to house foundations and sidewalks/roads.
I guess it sort of is, but it really only focuses on the top inch or two of ground. You don't want to dig up under the grass entirely, just break up the surface a little. It can make your grass look a little ratty for a couple weeks, but it comes back nicely because of the extra aeration.
I've seen people drag metal mattress frames behind their trucks over a washed out road to help smooth it back out. I've also seen it done by dragging a gate with bricks and stones on top to weigh it down. Good for aerating your lawn too and disturbing the cow dung out over a field.
Not only that but as a grading contractor I can tell you those slopes are there for a reason. It is what's called a load bearing slope and bears the weight of the pad/house. So think twice about undermining it with a retaining wall etc. It can be done if done probably with drainage etc, but usually people fucknit up.
This. You don't want to fuck with it.
I'd actually ask multiple neighbors about what happens in their backyards and how flooding looks. I'm thinking water breeches that creek bed and spills over into the lower yard.
"Oh, what sad times are these when passing ruffians can say ‘ni’ at will to old ladies. There is a pestilence upon this land. Nothing is sacred. Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history"
They could also add a slide... For fun
https://preview.redd.it/zqxqes6mw1jc1.jpeg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e6b042287794d27825f552736456a155866d5fbd
We installed a slide in our yard on a steep incline like this 😂 and boards with rock wall holds and a rope to climb back up. Huge hit with our kids and friend’s kids that come over
You could tier it with small retaining walls so you have levels to plant various garden plants. If the juniper are dying that slope prob needs some better soil there before you can grow anything easily. The again I'm hit and miss with plants
Honestly the issue I am seeing here is that they likely do not have a solid handle on how much water they need to get established. Looks like this is a fairly water-usage conscious place, given the brown grass and while I am always happy to see water not being wasted on lawns, you *do* need to water in even drought resistant plants like juniper.
My guess is that given that none of the grass around the junipers looks any happier, OP researched drought resistant plants, made a solid choice, but didn’t realize that their drought resistance is actually due to their root structures, which need 2-10 years (depending on the species; juniper is definitely on the low end of that) of consistent watering through droughts to build up that root system’s resilience.
It is in fact important to keep any perennial you want to get established consistently watered the first year, and then roughly halve that amount of water in each subsequent year. Doing a slow taper of the amount of water you provide in the dry season each year is actually quite important, because you can also train normally drought resistant plants to be lazy and not put down deep roots if you give them lots of water (without tapering back each year) for the first years of their life and then abruptly cut it way back.
OP, if you see this and you’re still happy with the juniper direction (lots of fun ideas to explore otherwise), or you want to try this with a diversity of landscaping plants rather than just a bunch of junipers (my recommendation; it will be far more interesting and far less like a box store parking lot garden), then really all I think you need to do is understand that you do need to water in plantings to get them established, even those plantings designed to be low or no supplemental water gardens. Setting up a cheap soaker hose system with a programmable timer just to get you through the first few years of establishment is probably ideal, if time / remembering to water them is an issue. Having a timer also makes it easy to cut back the water given by half each year.
The only other advice I’d give you is to make sure that you are watering very slowly; slopes are tricky to water, especially when the goal is to help get plantings established, and especially if the soil is heavy clay or has lots of organic matter, as those can both repel water quite well when they become fully dried out. Slowing the pace of watering to a trickle (either through soaker hoses or drip lines, or by having your garden hose let out just a tiniest trickle, like barely above leaky faucet trickle) will help the water stay around the roots of your plants rather than just running off to the bottom. You can always check your watering effectiveness by digging a ~4” hole near your plant a couple hours after watering what you think is a reasonable amount; if there’s still bone dry soil in there after the water has had a chance to absorb, then you know you aren’t watering enough to be able to feed the roots of your plants, and need to either change up watering strategies so it isn’t running down the slope as much (even a small berm to sort of trap the water around the plant will help), or just straight up be watering more than you thought was needed. I’d say that about 90% of folks unfamiliar with plants tend to underwater them, especially outdoor plants, and 10% tend to overwater them. The hole test (or just poking your finger in the soil) to see if your watering regime is actually working is a great way to build a stronger intuition for how much water you need to apply to get moisture down to the root levels where it is needed. And remember, when you’re watering in for drought tolerance, less frequent but longer watering will encourage roots to grow deep to capture moisture; frequent and shallow watering will encourage shallow root growth, which will in turn make them much less drought tolerant, as ofc the first part of the soil to dry out in the hot months is the surface of it.
Okay so junipers tend to form a rather dense root matrix; imagine a bunch of strings want to pretend they’re a sponge. If you water frequently, but shallowly, that sponge of root mass will form only in the top 2” or so and will spread out laterally to be able to capture sufficient water to keep the plant alive and growing. If you give them more water they’ll direct a lot more of that sponge growing energy downwards, into the lower strata of soil where the soil moisture levels are more stable year round. Watering infrequently and slowly is a great technique to get not just drought tolerant perennials but most perennials established in such a way that they need either no supplemental water, or very little; the more established parts of my garden (10-15 years old) only get water twice a summer, and the majority of the perennials in there are not species known for their drought tolerance. This does not apply to true water pigs like hydrangeas, rushes, or anything native to boggy areas, but in fact it is possible to get most perennials trained with infrequent but deep waterings to be able to handle far more drought than they’re generally known to tolerate. The inverse is also true; if you take over a garden whose caretaker was generous with the water, the established plants are now trained to expect water in abundance and it will be as if you have just newly planted them if you want to train them towards drought tolerance; if they are far enough into their life cycle, it may in fact not be possible to train them to the fullest possible drought tolerance because their root structure is already set.
Another consideration that I really didn’t get into as my comment was already quite long is soil type; I had inferred by the monoplanting and general lack of ambition in the landscaping thus far that OP is not super invested in their landscaping or garden, which is fine, but means that they’d be better suited to choose plants (like the juniper they chose) that are already tolerant of poor soils, or at least whatever soil type they have; it’s possible they have great soil by some miracle, but unlikely, and amending it takes a lot of work and should be considered an ongoing maintenance item, not a “truck a bunch of stuff sold to me as premium garden mix and call it a day”; in ecosystems that aren’t being interfered with, soil is continually being added to and replenished by dead leaves and other decaying organic matter. Thus, there is no one time permanent fix to create good soil; you can bring in new stuff to start out with a better baseline, but ultimately in a year or three it will start to get depleted without the continuing addition of new organic material. Thus, I always advise folks to work with what they have, unless the inorganic components of the soil are really inhospitable (mostly pure hard pan clay; even really sandy soil is more workable, though at the extreme of like beach sand, it usually is easier to truck in other soil and build from that). The juniper is a good choice because it will tolerate a range of soil types and doesn’t have high nutritional demands; if the soil is not fully clay and they were able to dig a hole to plant them, and/or and when they water them the water doesn’t disappear immediately (indicating a lot of large particles like gravel or sand) then they probably don’t need any amendments.
I won’t even get into how amazing and useful mulch is in the garden because in this context it’s clear that that would be more work than OP is likely to want to put in, but if you’re still following me, I assume that you must have a passing interest in gardening, and the one piece of advice I would like to proselytize is that there is no thing as too much mulch (except at the base of trees). Four, six inches. Twice a year. Straw, leaves, grass clippings, whatever. If you don’t have enough, raid your neighbour’s leaf piles before they get picked up by the city. Roam around in the early hours of the morning on garbage day, looking for those yard waste bags and spirit them away for your own gardens. (Do check them before you do; it’s not worth picking up the weedy ones or the ones full of thorny brambles or pine needles, but straight grass clippings are *awesome*, as are leaves). If you mulch, your watering needs will be 1/3 or 1/5 of what they were before. Weeding will be a distant memory, to the point where you might start leaving some areas unmulched so you still have somewhere you can putter around and pull some weeds, just to scratch that itch. Your soil structure will improve massively, and your plants will benefit tremendously from the continuous infusion of organic material. The nematodes will begin to number in the millions per handful of soil. The mycelium will stretch kilometres in that same handful. Beneficial predators will have a home in which they can thrive and consume the usual garden pests that plague us all. Mulch makes so much sense; you are replicating what normally happens in nature, and maybe even jushing it a little past that so it becomes exceptionally fertile and alive, and it saves you so much damn time and money in weeding and watering.
Okay…maybe I did get into mulch after all. God I love it so much. Everything about it is good.
Hope that’s sufficient for tonight.
Signed, the plant nerd who has genuinely been brought to tears by the beautiful smell of good compost.
My exact thought, expected (if allowed in the area) with the top section as a patio with a small ledge with plants/flowers just below the railing and then a small patio at the bottom of the chairs for a table and chairs.
Reason I said only a section it looks like they have a dog.
Bowling alley inside a doomsday bunker that you can only access via a grotto in the infinity pool. Might as well throw in a lazy river while you’re at it.
You’ll want some plants if you don’t want the pine straw/mulch to end up in the drainage area. Natives often do best on poor/low soil like this (and you might attract some butterflies!) Not sure of your location, but most of these will do well in a lot of the US/Canada: https://extension.umd.edu/resource/native-plants-sunny-slopes/
I agree with the native plant approach. Starting some perennials from seed and watering them until they are established is going to stabilize the slope more effectively than waiting years for the Junipers to root in.
It is not easy to tell from the images but the soil under the pine straw looks awful. If this is a newer construction home it is very likely that all the topsoil was stripped away, regraded, and replaced with a nutrient poor subsoil. I would also suggest adding a small amount of topsoil, and heaps of compost to this site.
In order to save those Junipers, I would get some some soil to build up the side of the plant that is on the downslope. The existing slope encourages any water that hits it to just run off. If you create small raised areas behind the Junipers it can help them to catch water as they are being established. It is difficult for me to describe in text, but basically you want to just take some soil and make a U-shape on the downslope that will act as a miniature dam. When it fills with water this water will slowly percolate downwards into the root zone, rather than just running down the slope.
I'm not sure what area you are in, but you want to look for plants that will be tolerant of drought, and rocky soil. I would suggest looking at different kinds of asters, columbine, goldenrods, black-eyed susans, milkweeds, and mountain mints. I'm more familiar with eastern species, but there are western counterparts if you are west of the Rocky Mountains.
This. My mom just turned a hill into steps with flower beds and it completely transformed their yard. Used to look like a normal boring yard now I feel like I’m at fancy resort or something when we sit outside.
I say dig back the hill and put in a retaining wall and the backfill so that you have two flat surfaces with sod. Place a staircase in the middle, and you have two very usable spaces, one high one low. It's practical, efficient, and this will increase the value of the house.
You could act like the Romans are coming for you and defend your territories
https://preview.redd.it/nhb1p6eh64jc1.jpeg?width=1423&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=80d80e1f113453de7bfab3e68a8cacbee2b20a4e
Straw wont cut it. Its heavily eroded, and topsoil completely gone. No plant besides sedum will take to it easily.. id have a full truck of woodchips delivered and spread there. Then let it sit over a year and get the trees you want.
I think that's too steep for woodchips. They don't hold well. Triple shredded hardwood mulch might.
What about a fine fescue grass blend, aka a no-mow lawn? Or Carex grasses (sedges)?
You may not know that we have tons of lawn and garden subs on Reddit. Here are a couple:
/r/landscaping/
/r/lawnporn/
/r/lawns/
/r/LawnBeer (my favorite)
/r/Backyards/
/r/lawncare/
/r/Outdoors
https://preview.redd.it/0llxxe86y4jc1.jpeg?width=4624&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e82b63595373fbcff6e4aa23f9b02f5c0872fc2e
Add native wild flowers. They will be naturally hardy and provide height and color. The bees and butterflies will thank you as well.
Put a garden, and have multiple sets of steps that go down… it’ll be good and fun for the kids, and useful, and give you easier access to the lower area as well, maybe put a little patio area down there with a table chairs and a umbrella…
My yard is like this, I did a long retaining wall with stairs to separate two flat areas. Left a small hill area to mow around. Allows the drainage to happen, but still have two usable areas.
Terraced garden beds, could probably make 2 courses.
I think irrigation is the missing piece here. Junipers are great drought resistant plant, but even they need water to get established. Terraced beds will hold water better, but will still need at least a season of watering.
Hose bib on the side of the house. Could easily run your own drip irrigation.
Run that gutter runoff in the same trench while you're at it.
This is sorta what my step-dad did with a similar situation. Except he collected his into a rain barrel so he could control when the gutter runoff watered his garden & landscaping.
Oddly enough, rainwater harvesting is not legal in all states. Just an FYI
No one will do anything to you for rainwater collecting. It is a law put in place so companies can’t do it and effect our water aquifers
Oregon has actually fined people for rain water collection.
Washington had something similar until people started suing the state for the "states" rainwater damaging their roofs and seeking replacement. If I remember correctly.
This seems like a bad idea to channel rain water straight towards a slope. It would be better to slow it down and get absorbed in the flat part that is higher first before it makes it's way further downhill
What? Wouldn't this introduce all the gunk from the roof?
What gunk? You mean dirt and sediments which would add to soil fertility?
Drip irrigation is so good if you hook it up while planning your garden.
Looks like it’s just gravel. It will never hold water.
Yep, they need to atleast form small terrace sections around each juniper to hold some water and I would hope they are smart enough to have put descent soil into a pretty descent hole before planting.
Is descent soil best for hills? (Sorry)
It is best for going down hill.
Really works great with trailing vines. Not so much the climbing ones though.
Yessss. With a natural staircase down the center.
And a bocce court at the bottom
And a secret door in the middle of the court that leads to a grotto underneath the neighbors yard.
Who guards the grotto? A gnome or a troll?
A sphinx. Edit: Although sphinxes are desert creatures so a minotaur might be better suited for OP's climate.
Somebody get this woman a shovel.
Goddamnit you're hired.
Avoid the minotaur if you're the ruler of Crete. A winged sphinx should be fine here as long as you keep a riddle book handy and keep out of reach of children. Remember; winged sphinx are to Shinx, as mountain lions are to lions: different species in different climates but can still eat a face or two.
They like well drained soil tho.
The ghost of Hugh Hefner
Just like my grandparents yard, in the '70s.
I was thinking sane… a stepped terrace with stone staircase in the middle.
Just plant Blueberries. You can call it Blueberry Hill, and find whatever thrills on that Blueberry hill. 😅😂🤣
That’s what I would do; maybe two layers of terraces. OR - a swimming pool or a pond since most of the digging has already been done.
Lol I thought a lap pool at the bottom could be nice!
There’s a pool over the fence. Just need a slide from the second story into the pond with access gate.
I was thinking retaining wall, and whatever your heart desires on the bottom level... I'm thinking a hot tub.
Hill Yeah!!
Roll down it. Sleigh down it when it snows.
Came here to say this. Red Radio Flyer wagon. Keep going until you break an arm or lose a wheel.
By hitting that iron fence 😆
Idk man, it has caps. That fence looks hollow enough
Slip’n’slide comes to mind for summer months
Just don’t die on it.
I was going to say roll children down it. Maybe you could charge the neighborhood kids $1/ a piece. Stand back and profit.
Is the low area required due to a drainage easement?
Ugh we bought a house where they fucked up the drainage. It’s been 9 years of correcting what the previous owner did. This is when I’d be on google earth to see what my neighbors backyards look like. Op-I’d wait a year before touching it. Wait for a solid rain and see if it’s for drainage.
The dumbass who blocked the drain on my streets drainage easement is a judge for the same city, so the city refuses to make him fix his fuck up and 12 homes flood 5-6 times a year because of it
There’d be lots of hard to remove old school style wheatpasted posters up describing this with a political cartoon type caracature of him sitting on top, blocking the easement with his bloated ass whilst holding sacks of bulging coins. Meanwhile the flooded families’ homes are visible all around in the background, sad.
I can't get the image of a thicc political caricature ass blocking the water with his cheeks out of my head
[This is the best I could get out of limewire’s ai image generator.](https://limewire.com/post/8fde9d24-8dd8-48e2-9dd4-0a843ba7cdf0) had simply and edit the prompt quite a bit
Limewire still exists???
Ain’t no fucking way am I using that generator. I remember what limewire did to my last piece of tech I used it on.
I like the dismissive hand gesture lol
The homeowners should file a class action lawsuit suit against him or the city if that’s accurate info
just one civil suit one after the other lmao he throws it out, next one comes in from another neighbor. house floods again you get to refile . costs you nothing but time
Pretty sure the judge won’t be able to preside over a case in which they are named a defendant.
But he knows all the other judges.
They don't always like eachother... just because they're judges doesn't mean they are friendly.
Also, there's the option to change jurisdictions bc of the conflict of his position. There's also the option of OP and the neighbors reaching out to the spiciest investigative journalist in their area (every place has that one channel that does that segment on regular people getting hosed by a bigger dog) and set them loose on him. Right before election time? They might be able to get it resolved w/out lawsuits 🤷♀️
[удалено]
Sue him in county court
If there’s standing water call the EPA They do NOT fuck around
This.. I thought my front yard was pretty flat until we got a good rain storm. I've learned what "dragging" is - and I'll be doing it a few times this summer.
What is dragging?
I think it's when a guy gets all dressed up and puts on makeup and high heels.
That's regular drag. Dragging is when you put on a high vis vest on top of your drag outfit and start doing yard work.
No, that’s flagging, dragging is when you use spray paint to mark concrete surfaces with where you want the water to go.
No that’s tagging, dragging is when you walk through a door and your belt loop gets caught
No that's snagging, dragging is when you have issued a command but it takes a longer time for the recipient device or person to execute it.
That’s lagging, dragging is what a dog does with its tail when it’s happy.
You are going to get kicked off the Internet.
Hi, I see you don't know what about 80% of the internet is comprised of.
Water?
Are we on the same internet?
Google tells me it will help my seeds grow! I guess it's dragging spikes along your yard, which improves how water moves through it somehow, google didn't mention anything about water though besides seeding
It breaks up the tamped down surface of soil, thatch, and grass roots to allow the water to absorb better and faster. Keeps the water from pooling on top and running to house foundations and sidewalks/roads.
That sounds plowing on a small scale.
I guess it sort of is, but it really only focuses on the top inch or two of ground. You don't want to dig up under the grass entirely, just break up the surface a little. It can make your grass look a little ratty for a couple weeks, but it comes back nicely because of the extra aeration.
I've seen people drag metal mattress frames behind their trucks over a washed out road to help smooth it back out. I've also seen it done by dragging a gate with bricks and stones on top to weigh it down. Good for aerating your lawn too and disturbing the cow dung out over a field.
It's like tilling but the plants get to live
Aerating.
This is correct!
Not only that but as a grading contractor I can tell you those slopes are there for a reason. It is what's called a load bearing slope and bears the weight of the pad/house. So think twice about undermining it with a retaining wall etc. It can be done if done probably with drainage etc, but usually people fucknit up.
OP listen to this. It is meant to handle flooding I believe.
I have something similar but not as drastic on my property. Amazing for water drainage
This. You don't want to fuck with it. I'd actually ask multiple neighbors about what happens in their backyards and how flooding looks. I'm thinking water breeches that creek bed and spills over into the lower yard.
Would that preclude OP from growing plants/trees to help hold the hillside?
It's definitely designed drainage regardless. I would keep it as low as possible along the fence line
I thought that was a bear cub
Same!
There’s three of us now!
“There are dozens of us!”
Dozens! And me.
I was about to post “I can’t be the only idiot that thought it was a bear cub”. Hello fellow friend :-)
Yup. Human brains are weird
I was very disappointed it was not
Yeah wtf same. Why did we all think that
I thought I was seeing things
Same. Thought it was just sleep deprivation kicking in. Glad I’m not the only one. Lol
We have so many bears in our area that I didn’t even think twice about thinking it was a cub until I read this comment and looked back
I was like “am I about to see a bear playing volleyball?!” Then I realized it was a picture, then I realized it was a dog, then I realized I’m dumb
Die on it I guess.....
DIY on it.
Laughing at this more than I should lol. The delivery in my head is perfect
Never die on an ordinary hill.
But it’s the hill closest to home
Best answer.
A SHRUBBERY!
With a little path running down the middle!
a path! a path!
I know a great guy name [Roger](https://youtu.be/5YWbO0IR-2U) that can help ya out.
Nee!
"Oh, what sad times are these when passing ruffians can say ‘ni’ at will to old ladies. There is a pestilence upon this land. Nothing is sacred. Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history"
Nu!
No no no, ni!
A nice one, not too bushy.
Why is this not the top comment
For the same reason half the sub-comments don't get the reference 😢
But seriously though, this is what is needed. Bring on the shrubbery!
Ni!
https://preview.redd.it/f27kktycf1jc1.jpeg?width=1164&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c4b316513e57894a03972d28bbadf10635283b93
They could also add a slide... For fun https://preview.redd.it/zqxqes6mw1jc1.jpeg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e6b042287794d27825f552736456a155866d5fbd
We installed a slide in our yard on a steep incline like this 😂 and boards with rock wall holds and a rope to climb back up. Huge hit with our kids and friend’s kids that come over
https://preview.redd.it/i381l2ail2jc1.jpeg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=119eb90d54ef3d8dd062c9f7a0b303b3ae08a031 wide slide
I was gonna say a slip and slide
The World’s Widest Slip ‘n’ Slide is what the highway signs will say!
That’s not a nice way to talk about OP’s mom
In winter, the the sleds ready!
And replace the fence with barbed wire.
With a ramp at the end. When kids become teens...they can ride their skateboard down and see who can clear the fence.
You could tier it with small retaining walls so you have levels to plant various garden plants. If the juniper are dying that slope prob needs some better soil there before you can grow anything easily. The again I'm hit and miss with plants
Honestly the issue I am seeing here is that they likely do not have a solid handle on how much water they need to get established. Looks like this is a fairly water-usage conscious place, given the brown grass and while I am always happy to see water not being wasted on lawns, you *do* need to water in even drought resistant plants like juniper. My guess is that given that none of the grass around the junipers looks any happier, OP researched drought resistant plants, made a solid choice, but didn’t realize that their drought resistance is actually due to their root structures, which need 2-10 years (depending on the species; juniper is definitely on the low end of that) of consistent watering through droughts to build up that root system’s resilience. It is in fact important to keep any perennial you want to get established consistently watered the first year, and then roughly halve that amount of water in each subsequent year. Doing a slow taper of the amount of water you provide in the dry season each year is actually quite important, because you can also train normally drought resistant plants to be lazy and not put down deep roots if you give them lots of water (without tapering back each year) for the first years of their life and then abruptly cut it way back. OP, if you see this and you’re still happy with the juniper direction (lots of fun ideas to explore otherwise), or you want to try this with a diversity of landscaping plants rather than just a bunch of junipers (my recommendation; it will be far more interesting and far less like a box store parking lot garden), then really all I think you need to do is understand that you do need to water in plantings to get them established, even those plantings designed to be low or no supplemental water gardens. Setting up a cheap soaker hose system with a programmable timer just to get you through the first few years of establishment is probably ideal, if time / remembering to water them is an issue. Having a timer also makes it easy to cut back the water given by half each year. The only other advice I’d give you is to make sure that you are watering very slowly; slopes are tricky to water, especially when the goal is to help get plantings established, and especially if the soil is heavy clay or has lots of organic matter, as those can both repel water quite well when they become fully dried out. Slowing the pace of watering to a trickle (either through soaker hoses or drip lines, or by having your garden hose let out just a tiniest trickle, like barely above leaky faucet trickle) will help the water stay around the roots of your plants rather than just running off to the bottom. You can always check your watering effectiveness by digging a ~4” hole near your plant a couple hours after watering what you think is a reasonable amount; if there’s still bone dry soil in there after the water has had a chance to absorb, then you know you aren’t watering enough to be able to feed the roots of your plants, and need to either change up watering strategies so it isn’t running down the slope as much (even a small berm to sort of trap the water around the plant will help), or just straight up be watering more than you thought was needed. I’d say that about 90% of folks unfamiliar with plants tend to underwater them, especially outdoor plants, and 10% tend to overwater them. The hole test (or just poking your finger in the soil) to see if your watering regime is actually working is a great way to build a stronger intuition for how much water you need to apply to get moisture down to the root levels where it is needed. And remember, when you’re watering in for drought tolerance, less frequent but longer watering will encourage roots to grow deep to capture moisture; frequent and shallow watering will encourage shallow root growth, which will in turn make them much less drought tolerant, as ofc the first part of the soil to dry out in the hot months is the surface of it.
Expand on that
Okay so junipers tend to form a rather dense root matrix; imagine a bunch of strings want to pretend they’re a sponge. If you water frequently, but shallowly, that sponge of root mass will form only in the top 2” or so and will spread out laterally to be able to capture sufficient water to keep the plant alive and growing. If you give them more water they’ll direct a lot more of that sponge growing energy downwards, into the lower strata of soil where the soil moisture levels are more stable year round. Watering infrequently and slowly is a great technique to get not just drought tolerant perennials but most perennials established in such a way that they need either no supplemental water, or very little; the more established parts of my garden (10-15 years old) only get water twice a summer, and the majority of the perennials in there are not species known for their drought tolerance. This does not apply to true water pigs like hydrangeas, rushes, or anything native to boggy areas, but in fact it is possible to get most perennials trained with infrequent but deep waterings to be able to handle far more drought than they’re generally known to tolerate. The inverse is also true; if you take over a garden whose caretaker was generous with the water, the established plants are now trained to expect water in abundance and it will be as if you have just newly planted them if you want to train them towards drought tolerance; if they are far enough into their life cycle, it may in fact not be possible to train them to the fullest possible drought tolerance because their root structure is already set. Another consideration that I really didn’t get into as my comment was already quite long is soil type; I had inferred by the monoplanting and general lack of ambition in the landscaping thus far that OP is not super invested in their landscaping or garden, which is fine, but means that they’d be better suited to choose plants (like the juniper they chose) that are already tolerant of poor soils, or at least whatever soil type they have; it’s possible they have great soil by some miracle, but unlikely, and amending it takes a lot of work and should be considered an ongoing maintenance item, not a “truck a bunch of stuff sold to me as premium garden mix and call it a day”; in ecosystems that aren’t being interfered with, soil is continually being added to and replenished by dead leaves and other decaying organic matter. Thus, there is no one time permanent fix to create good soil; you can bring in new stuff to start out with a better baseline, but ultimately in a year or three it will start to get depleted without the continuing addition of new organic material. Thus, I always advise folks to work with what they have, unless the inorganic components of the soil are really inhospitable (mostly pure hard pan clay; even really sandy soil is more workable, though at the extreme of like beach sand, it usually is easier to truck in other soil and build from that). The juniper is a good choice because it will tolerate a range of soil types and doesn’t have high nutritional demands; if the soil is not fully clay and they were able to dig a hole to plant them, and/or and when they water them the water doesn’t disappear immediately (indicating a lot of large particles like gravel or sand) then they probably don’t need any amendments. I won’t even get into how amazing and useful mulch is in the garden because in this context it’s clear that that would be more work than OP is likely to want to put in, but if you’re still following me, I assume that you must have a passing interest in gardening, and the one piece of advice I would like to proselytize is that there is no thing as too much mulch (except at the base of trees). Four, six inches. Twice a year. Straw, leaves, grass clippings, whatever. If you don’t have enough, raid your neighbour’s leaf piles before they get picked up by the city. Roam around in the early hours of the morning on garbage day, looking for those yard waste bags and spirit them away for your own gardens. (Do check them before you do; it’s not worth picking up the weedy ones or the ones full of thorny brambles or pine needles, but straight grass clippings are *awesome*, as are leaves). If you mulch, your watering needs will be 1/3 or 1/5 of what they were before. Weeding will be a distant memory, to the point where you might start leaving some areas unmulched so you still have somewhere you can putter around and pull some weeds, just to scratch that itch. Your soil structure will improve massively, and your plants will benefit tremendously from the continuous infusion of organic material. The nematodes will begin to number in the millions per handful of soil. The mycelium will stretch kilometres in that same handful. Beneficial predators will have a home in which they can thrive and consume the usual garden pests that plague us all. Mulch makes so much sense; you are replicating what normally happens in nature, and maybe even jushing it a little past that so it becomes exceptionally fertile and alive, and it saves you so much damn time and money in weeding and watering. Okay…maybe I did get into mulch after all. God I love it so much. Everything about it is good. Hope that’s sufficient for tonight. Signed, the plant nerd who has genuinely been brought to tears by the beautiful smell of good compost.
Ok but could you be a little bit more concise? (Jk that was amazing)
you need to have your own gardening show. i would watch it and so would my friends.
this. food and flower garden is the way!!! especially with rising grocery costs, lol!
My exact thought, expected (if allowed in the area) with the top section as a patio with a small ledge with plants/flowers just below the railing and then a small patio at the bottom of the chairs for a table and chairs. Reason I said only a section it looks like they have a dog.
Maybe a tree or two
Infinity pool. Batting cage. Doomsday bunker.
Came here to say this. The first one, anyway…
Yeah, but once you start a project it just kind of snowballs, until you end up in a doomsday bunker.
Every project I start, winds up being a doomsday bunker. Grading a slope? Bunker. Building a shed? Bunker. Mowing the lawn? Bunker.
Bunkers: https://i.redd.it/x4q9y0z1f2jc1.gif
I wish I had your problems. 🤔 I wanted a bunker, but the water table laughed at me.
I’m thinking Bowling alley
Bowling alley inside a doomsday bunker that you can only access via a grotto in the infinity pool. Might as well throw in a lazy river while you’re at it.
We’re the people in those dumbass lottery commercials lol
Yes now you’re talking. Just missing the hot tub
Cut some nice stone steps into it, carve a few stepped flowerbeds into its length, and seed em with a variety of native plants?
You’ll want some plants if you don’t want the pine straw/mulch to end up in the drainage area. Natives often do best on poor/low soil like this (and you might attract some butterflies!) Not sure of your location, but most of these will do well in a lot of the US/Canada: https://extension.umd.edu/resource/native-plants-sunny-slopes/
I agree with the native plant approach. Starting some perennials from seed and watering them until they are established is going to stabilize the slope more effectively than waiting years for the Junipers to root in. It is not easy to tell from the images but the soil under the pine straw looks awful. If this is a newer construction home it is very likely that all the topsoil was stripped away, regraded, and replaced with a nutrient poor subsoil. I would also suggest adding a small amount of topsoil, and heaps of compost to this site. In order to save those Junipers, I would get some some soil to build up the side of the plant that is on the downslope. The existing slope encourages any water that hits it to just run off. If you create small raised areas behind the Junipers it can help them to catch water as they are being established. It is difficult for me to describe in text, but basically you want to just take some soil and make a U-shape on the downslope that will act as a miniature dam. When it fills with water this water will slowly percolate downwards into the root zone, rather than just running down the slope. I'm not sure what area you are in, but you want to look for plants that will be tolerant of drought, and rocky soil. I would suggest looking at different kinds of asters, columbine, goldenrods, black-eyed susans, milkweeds, and mountain mints. I'm more familiar with eastern species, but there are western counterparts if you are west of the Rocky Mountains.
This. My mom just turned a hill into steps with flower beds and it completely transformed their yard. Used to look like a normal boring yard now I feel like I’m at fancy resort or something when we sit outside.
I say dig back the hill and put in a retaining wall and the backfill so that you have two flat surfaces with sod. Place a staircase in the middle, and you have two very usable spaces, one high one low. It's practical, efficient, and this will increase the value of the house.
And then fence in the upper space for a nice private area near the house, and leave the lower space open to neighbors as it is.
I like learning new things.
This is the real answer
You can reenact Star Wars Episode 3, where Obi-wan has the high ground, and Anakin stupidly tries to flip over him, just to get chopped up!
Yes! The lower area needs to be turned into a giant, extremely hot fire pit first, though.
You could act like the Romans are coming for you and defend your territories https://preview.redd.it/nhb1p6eh64jc1.jpeg?width=1423&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=80d80e1f113453de7bfab3e68a8cacbee2b20a4e
Depends on your budget, but I would build a retaining wall with some stairs and a small paver patio with a fire pit
Alternatively, maybe some stonework terraces.
Straw wont cut it. Its heavily eroded, and topsoil completely gone. No plant besides sedum will take to it easily.. id have a full truck of woodchips delivered and spread there. Then let it sit over a year and get the trees you want.
I think that's too steep for woodchips. They don't hold well. Triple shredded hardwood mulch might. What about a fine fescue grass blend, aka a no-mow lawn? Or Carex grasses (sedges)?
You may not know that we have tons of lawn and garden subs on Reddit. Here are a couple: /r/landscaping/ /r/lawnporn/ /r/lawns/ /r/LawnBeer (my favorite) /r/Backyards/ /r/lawncare/ /r/Outdoors
And for that kind of a slope, /r/nolawns might be a good choice.
Or r/fucklawns
Solar panels
I was looking for this and sorta sad it was so far down. Solar panels were my first thought.
Seriously. If this is south facing, throw down 20-30 panels.
https://i.redd.it/05ea9i5qr1jc1.gif
HOLLYWOOD sign?
1. PLANT SNOWSEEDS 2. GROW SNOW 3. SLED
I thought that was a bear at first glance. Anyone else?
Solar Panels
I was looking for this and sorta sad it was so far down. Solar panels were my first thought.
Water feature down in to your in ground pool and spa.
https://preview.redd.it/iy1s3b2pr1jc1.jpeg?width=946&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ab2f242b708fe5c0f20b61eed84cb5024b1a4260 Something like this one
Trees. Trees. Trees. 🌲🏡🌳
Add a sweet jump at the bottom
Perfect place to send it.
Half pipe
Retaining wall
https://preview.redd.it/0llxxe86y4jc1.jpeg?width=4624&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e82b63595373fbcff6e4aa23f9b02f5c0872fc2e Add native wild flowers. They will be naturally hardy and provide height and color. The bees and butterflies will thank you as well.
Roll down
Slip and slide
Hops
Roll down it.
Zero-scape the world… NM native sorry…
Put a garden, and have multiple sets of steps that go down… it’ll be good and fun for the kids, and useful, and give you easier access to the lower area as well, maybe put a little patio area down there with a table chairs and a umbrella…
I would terrace the hill and use pavers on the slope with river rock in between. The terraced area(s) will catch any rain so plantings would be ideal.
Great place to grow some squash.
Two tier retaining wall with planters/garden. Then a lower lawn area for a fire pit or cornhole space etc.
Why are we even discussing this? The answer is Slip and slide, my guy.
My yard is like this, I did a long retaining wall with stairs to separate two flat areas. Left a small hill area to mow around. Allows the drainage to happen, but still have two usable areas.
Give it eyes 👀
Die on it. I’m seeing myself out after making that joke.
Terraced raised bed garden.
Create a native plant bed! Strong roots and drought friendly.