Rocky Hillside Restoration – Native Plant Slope Design

We’ve been working with this client over a number of years to both rehabilitate and maintain many areas of the vast property. This hillside rehab started with a focus on a large south facing slope that had been previously planted but neglected. The client’s main goal was to plant species that would survive in the hot, dry conditions as well as to diversify by bringing in native plants for pollinators.

Since the previous planting was half-functioning, the client agreed to move forward with a non-traditional design process that began with management time to reduce weedy and invasive species. Once we removed the weeds, some of the existing plantings bounced back, allowing us to map out which areas needed additional native plantings. This process saved time and cost associated with a formal plan and also reduced waste materials by retaining and designing with the already existing desirable plants.

As we removed the invasives, we uncovered many boulders and rock outcroppings, which inspired us to model our plantings on the driftless region of southeastern Minnesota. This region is characterized by steep hills, forested ridges, and dotted with limestone rocks and is quintessential of the Great Lakes.

Over the years, we have done a version of this remove-first, plan-plantings-second process on other zones of the property, slowly rehabilitating neglected plantings, adding new natives, and maintaining our newer plantings. Uniquely, this hillside site requires extra maintenance to ensure the success of our plantings due to the adjacent horse pasture, which allows a lot of weed seeds to enter planting zones. We factor the horses into our maintenance as we plan our care of this hillside property.