What should I plant on my Californian Slope?
A mixture of deep-rooted California native shrubs, and trees, mixed
with shallow-rooted shrubs, and perennials, mulched and with no weeds,
will control erosion on the slope. Why should you plant a California
native plant community on the slope and not grass or ice plant! Because
the native plants connect with each other underground, and the
microorganisms that live in association with them produce tiny threads
that ramify through the soil, coiling around particles of sand and clay
and holding them, and also producing glue-like compounds to hold the
soil particles. This interconnection, I guess you could think of it as a
natural microorganism community underground living in cooperation with
the plant community aboveground, which the grass and ice plant, and
other alien plants do not possess, is why it is critical to plant
California native plants in a spaced plant community to control erosion
on a slope.
Mynativeplants.com is a
search engine to provide a plant list for your particular site. The
plants love the slopes. Enter the information you found going through
the list above and TA DA!, you have a working plant list. Start with
that list and 'weed' out the plants you do not think will work, or you
just don't like. Try to get down to about 5-10 plant types altogether
for most of the slope.
Here are
some VERY limited simple plant lists of plants that will generally work.
Some plants for south facing slopes along the coast in sand(where
day time temperatures rarely exceed 90F).
Mix and match to make a good slope planting.
Most
Ceanothus, the best are:
Ceanothus griseus horizontalis and
Ceanothus thyrsiflorus repens
Some plants for south facing slopes
along the coast in clay(where day time temperatures rarely exceed 90F).
Mix and match to make a good slope planting.
Arctostaphylos edmundsii (all forms)
Arctostaphylos 'Louis Edmunds'
Deer slopes:
deer are lazy, give them a path, they'll commonly stay on the straight
and narrow.
Baccharis pil. 'Pigeon Point'(cover with chicken wire for first few
months)
