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So my brother has a backyard with two 40 foot by 50 foot hillside dirt slopes (30 degree slope roughly) bordered by a retaining wall in Southern California (each slope sort of looks similar to the attached image but much more uneven and with way more weeds). It rained recently, and now the hillside(s) are covered with weeds.

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Initially, he was going to do a non-woven geofiber textile fabric to prevent weed growth covered by some kind of gravel or crushed rock for decoration. Because of the slopes of the hills, he was told it would be fairly expensive labor-wise (you'd have to possibly re-grade the hill a bit, etc.) He was pointed in the direction of doing some kind of ground cover plant (myoporum or dwarf carpet of stars) spaced by punching holes through the non-woven textile fabric in lieu of the rocks as a cheaper alternative.

The goal of all this is to get a decent looking backyard that requires no water and no maintenance (e.g., pulling weeds, watering or trimming decorative plants) or as close to zero-maintenance as possible.

  1. If he goes the ground cover route, does he need the textile fabric at all? The nursery said it could help prevent weed growth and you could get adequate ground cover by punching holes in the textile fabric along a certain interval spacing. However, a landscape designer told him that actually, you don't want the fabric in case one of the ground cover plants dies. It seems like if a plant died, you could just use trimming from the ground cover plant and start over though, but I'm not a gardener.

  2. Other than rocks or ground cover, is there another potentially better alternative (better in terms of less time to maintain and/or the same or better cost)?

In Southern California, it seems like labor is more expensive than material (or at least most of the time it is).

Rohit Gupta
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Nona
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    Non-woven barriers do little for the cohesion & wellbeing of soil structures and provide no medium term benefit for deterrence against weeds. Within 18 months, airborne detritus will settle atop the barrier, fostering weed growth as well as more pervasive weeds easily puncture it making it 3x more difficult to remove after 3 years. Of course, your brother is the arbiter of what he & his family want to see & the most durable and economic solution might involve using a mixture of native ground cover plants, rockery and heavy mulching. A local landscape permaculture-type gardener is needed? – Nikki May 26 '23 at 23:36
  • Biased by only having spent time in San Francisco, is he allowed to water his plants and how often does it rain – Rohit Gupta May 27 '23 at 01:58
  • Any sheet mulch like fabric will starve the soil of oxygen and kill the organisms in it; some materials, like cardboard, do this very quickly. Fabric is slower but it WILL kill the soil. Most groundcovers will not root in gravel or decorative rock, so he'd be better off with an organic mulch for them to root into. Once rooted, if the groundcover is good enough then he'll have no weeds. – Jurp May 27 '23 at 03:01
  • @RohitGupta - yes he can water his plants as he is the owner, typically it rains a few times in the winter months (Dec - Feb). The goal though is zero maintenance if possible (no watering, no weeding, no trimming, etc) which is why he looked at rocks + weed fabric. It's only cost that's making him look at alternatives. – Nona May 28 '23 at 22:16

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