our house has basically an 8 ft cliff in the back yard that a wall was built against creating a back courtyard. behind that, is the nightmare hell strip that backs up to a golf course. in the hell strip there is a huge thicket of primrose jasmine, hackberry, and literally 8-12 foot tall pokeweed. it is not flat. I would really love it to be a fairy garden type area my daughter could play with a playhouse, flowers,hu paths etc. i have no idea how to start with this. my initial thought was to just chainsaw everything down and send it through a mulcher, let it sit for a year then start planting. the problem is backing up onto a golf course and being on top of a cliff I can not bring a truck up to dump mulch on it and the existing soil seems to be sand? maybe from the builders. is there someone I should just hire? should I just give up? thanks for any thoughts.
by PathologicalVodka
10 Comments
If you have the spare change, hire a landscaper for design and work. If not, start small. Pick a spot, maybe closest to house, and just clear that out. Trim anything you want to keep; trim/remove anything you don’t. I’d wait for a good rain, since it’ll be MUCH easier to remove if the ground is wet. Repeat as needed.
My first thought was whether goats for hire were a thing here – goats (or sheep) clearing overgrown lawns are one of my favorite niche YouTube genres
Rent a DR mower to zip thru and take it all out. Then cover with garbage bags (held down with rocks) to kill any growth coming back. Then in spring, start planting what you want.
I’ll tell you exactly how I dealt with this: I’ve paid people to dig out poison ivy and cow parsley by hand, cut and grind stumps of all hackberries, and scrape the rest for 3 years in a row. I am finally getting to a place where it’s not coming back nearly as thick.
I would start by selectively removing invasive plants, dead ones, and anything that is too large for the area. Then you can trim up some of the desirable plants and get a better understanding of how you want it to look. You should have some gaps after that to plant what you want.
I would look at it as a sculpture and begin in one corner removing the ugly and pruning up the existing plants into something nice. Reuse the trimmings as mulch. I’d make paths with some secluded landing areas with chimes or a bench. The logic being that those plants are already thriving, so why tear it all down when you can enjoy what is free?
Goats
I’m no expert but is there a chance that removing all of those plants there would destabilize that retaining wall and create some fairly big problems?
Brush hog
Goats