Grass ditches are awful. Please help a gardening noobie.

16 years ago

I'm new to the world of gardening, so please bear with me and my ignorance. I bought a house last summer with a fairly large (but boring) yard. I want to go the "natural garden" path and I also want to get rid of as much grass as possible. The grass ditches in the front and to the side of my house are without a doubt the worst part of the yard. The ditches are filled with grass and weeds that grow like there is no tomorrow, the angle makes mowing very difficult, there are many dry patches of exposed ground from (on steep angles), and I cannot take it anymore! I'm going through some of the posts similar to mine and there are some good suggestions.

I would like the groundcover to consist of junipers, ivy, and some other very low growing plant(s). Basically, plants that look good all year (mainly evergreens) and do not look weed-like (like some groundcover when it is not flowering). I'm in zone 7 and the ditches are in full sun, so I'm not sure if I can use these plants. I love almost all junipers, so I already bought several blue rug junipers. I'm told this is a fairly robust plant that can grow in dry soils (the sides of the ditches). Unfortunately, I cannot afford to fill over 300Ft of ditch with junipers at this time. I also want to buy some ivy, maybe for steeper parts of the ditch? Would English Ivy (my favorite) work, or is there a better substitute?

I think the ditches dry out pretty quick after rainfall, but there could be some poorly drained areas. For the areas in between the junipers and ivy and at the bottom of the ditch, I have found a few low-growing groundcover plants that I like: Creeping Thymus and Trailing Periwinkle. Anything close to these would be nice.

Beyond your plant suggestions (which I am very grateful for), I was also wondering the best way to kill the grass in the ditches. I really do not want to use Round-up or other chemicals. I read earlier that I could use the newspaper smother method combined with some type of netting (to hold the paper down). Then, once the grass is dead and the new plants are in the ground, how do I prevent erosion in areas where the plants have not covered the ground (especially if the groundcover used between and around the junipers is grown from seed)?

I apologize for my lengthy post, but I'm very excited and cannot wait to hear from you all!

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Comments (2)

hemnancy
16 years ago
I would never plant ivy as it is a major thug here and so easy to get out of control and strangle trees, so hard to get rid of once planted.

I have a long ditch also and solved the grass problem for part with a wild mint. I don't know how many people would like it but I love it there, it established itself, eliminated the grass, and blooms with purple flowers that the bees like in summer. I don't do anything to clear out old growth, it takes care of itself. My ditch is full of water all winter but yours may not be, so most plants can't deal with that but the mint can.

There are large junipers on top of part of my bank. I planted Rugosa roses on top of some of the bank. They are now 7-8' tall and make a nice screen. They require no care. I also have some horizontal Cotoneaster (deciduous) and native thimbleberry (deciduous) on the top, and on the sides I have planted a mix of sword ferns, St. John's Wort ground cover, Geranium macrorrhyzum, and Symphytum iberis- ground cover Comfrey, a tough plant that spreads and blooms in spring. They help suppress grass and bloom at various times. I originally used black plastic to kill grass before planting the banks.

Daylilies are a possibility in a ditch if the grass were eliminated first, they can grow in water. I wasn't up for trying to kill the grass in the ditch itself so I haven't tried them there, grass can grow up around them.
hemnancy
16 years ago
Here is a photo of my bank with the Rugosa rose at the top (pink flowers)-

This is a mix of sword ferns, Hypericum calycinum, and Geranium macrorrhyzum-

This is the wild mint growing up in the bottom of the deeper ditch not shown-

The first bank used to just be a mix of grass, weeds, and blackberry vines. I like the way it has filled in, the blackberries are still a smaller problem but when the ground is covered it keeps out a lot of weeds.
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