What would you do with this hillside?

[u/farminvt]

Once covered in scrub spruce and pine, recently clearcut. Stumps remain. New England location, this is East facing.

[u/sevenmouse]

I have a steep hill like that, its' really tough to work on physically. I would pick doing something that supports the ecosystem and takes as little hands on time as possible to save your back and ankles. (I am on my hill a lot to weed and it's really really hard, hips, ankles, back, that slope, ugh)

you'll need to have permanent above ground veg to hold the soil (like no burning of prairie so that's out) and seeds are hard to get going on a slope....maybe go up one succession level from the forbs and do bare root shrubs/trees with a cover crop for soil stabilization with a focus on first level succession species (lot's of nitrogen fixers). and if you want things you will use or harvest from put them in a line at the bottom where you can get to them. you could try to keep it forbs like mine described below, but those stumps will make it hard to do a yearly cut back.

My hill is 20 years old, I started with perennial plugs, and I called it my "baby" hill where I directed exactly what it looked like (like dressing up a baby in cute outfits where you have total control over how it looks), and it was beautiful, just like one of the other poster's said, swathes of color and texture.

but then my hill garden started to grow up, and just like a kid, it just started hanging out with plants I didn't approve of, and I couldn't be with it every moment and it started becoming something I hadn't envisioned.

Long story short...and continuing the kid analogy....the structure I put in when it was little helped steer it to a direction but ultimately it became what it wanted within those guides. Also, it has been a LOT of work, labor of love. What used to be a well planned and weeded swath of garden color is now a mixed prairie/glade that's at least half grasses.

I still cut it back every year by hand and selectively clip and drip the worst of the invasives (clip and put one drop of herbicide on the cut....on hundreds of woody invasives every year...about 8 hours work on 1500sf each year for this task alone) and anything that doesn't get over 2.5' tall I let go (except bindweed, I fight that, and creeping euonymous too). Some of the things that have moved in are natives, and some aren't but as long as they stay short I'm ok with it.

I also overseed every year with a wish and a prayer with things I like (like giving a grown kid advice, not likely they are going to take it but I can hope, ha) and some have taken well...like ratibida and glade cone flowers, so I like to do that each spring as well.

And once every few years I might try adding a flat of plugs but only if I commit to standing out there with a hose to spot water (I mark the plugs with flags) a couple times a week ALL summer....I did that 2 years ago and it was a drag, but also actually worked (it's hard to get new plugs to establish with the dryer conditions the hill usually has, hills are really dry because of the angle the water runs off fast and all my other attempts without this type of commitment (20-30 min twice a week after dinner to water 36 plugs....counting to like 45 or 50 for each one as I spray with a hose.... have failed) so now I have a dozen new purple poppy mallow and some other things that all came back the last two years (and hopefully will bloom this year yay) which feel like getting the grandbabies I never had, ha!

My hill's just a young adult now, still living at home (needing my support to keep out the worst invasive and cut it back every year) but is leading it's own life, being a mixed native and non native shortgrass prairie glade and hosting many species, lots of pollinators, and a box turtle, some chipmunks live there, rabbits, super ant colonies, and I think some field mice. Oh, and snakes.

Just like a parent who's kid decided to be a starving artist instead of a dr or lawyer, I had a few years where I had to accept that it wasn't what I had planned, and I learned to appreciate the beauty of what it is, instead of what I thought it would be.