To start, a wildflower meadow is probably *not* a native ecosystem where you are. So it is not going to be a low maintenance solution. What wants to be there are trees, because that is true for most of the northeast. The exceptions are places that are too wet for trees, or where the soil is too thin for trees. Otherwise, there are trees. So be prepared to either accept the trees or fight them.

Welcome, lapoltba, and congrats on your new home! Can you post a few photos, both of the immediate area you are asking about, and also a wider photo including the area surrounding it? If you are comfortable including the house in your photos, it will also give us some idea of the house style, since you will want your landscape to look harmonious with the house, and plantings for a midcentury modern house and a Victorian will probably look fairly different.

Usually I suggest folks in a new home mostly just live with what's there for a year to see where sun and shade are in different areas as you move through the year, how water moves through your property, and what comes up. (Even a neglected piece of property may have some really nice plants already there.) With that knowledge under your belt you will most likely be more successful with whatever you decide to plant. While you are waiting and observing, you can start a compost pile, get a soil test done, see if there's a garden club or plant swap in your area, figure out your USDA planting zone (see link below), and plant a few annuals or easy care perennials in pots or pre-existing beds for decoration until you can really get gardening.

For instance, you said, "I have just begun to clean it [the slope] up to try and make it look better." I'd probably stop and decide what I am going to do there before cleaning it up. Current vegetation is holding soil there and removing that will leave you with an erosion hazard until it has been replanted. It will be difficult to establish seed there since any rain will tend to wash it to the bottom of the slope, so you will most likely need to start with plants and a textured mulch that is more likely to stay put or a seed mat or erosion control mat of some kind. If it is so steep because it has been cut into to make a level spot for the house, it will also be subsoil, not topsoil, which will also create problems getting many types of new plantings established. As mad gallica commented, forest is the native groundcover here in New England, and meadows need to be maintained by mowing (or burning, not suggested in a residential situation.) So you would have to mow the area more than once a year to maintain it free of woody plants, and a slope that steep isn't conducive to mowing, even with a weed whacker/cord trimmer.

I am not trying to be discouraging, but both we and you will need more information before we jump into this issue willy-nilly if you aren't going to find yourself in a situation that will leave you having spent time and $ without achieving your goal of having a low maintenance, attractive area.

That said, if you have already cleared the area, I would get some bulk mulch (ie, a dump truck load or two, enough to cover the soil 3 inches deep) and spread it on the slope ASAP. Then plant something which will spread and keep the soil in place while you decide on a permanent solution. I used old style orange ditch lilies pre-existing on my property and a spreading perennial in a similar situation. We did soil prep and then mulched over multiple layers of newspapers to keep weeds from getting established before the plants we wanted spread enough to out-compete weeds. I still need to weed twice a year and renew the mulch about every 3 years, and am slowly adding other plants to make this area more interesting. (If you look in the background at the field edge, the field is actually flat, just to give you an idea of the slope I was working with. The house sits on the edge of an old river terrace.)

Here is a link that might be useful: USDA zone map

Hi lapoltba, and welcome to the forum.
Congratulations on your new home! How large an area are we talking about? mad-gallica is right (she usually is) in that much of inland NE land wants to return to forest and no matter what is growing on the slope, wind and wing will deposit seeds that will give you plant surprises. The sunny exposure is ripe for growth and you ask about (plants) "that will retain the already established stability of the hill/soil, but look presentable".
1. If this slope is in the back of your house at 30 degrees, how much of it do you see? And, who does see this slope?
2. If erosion control is not a current problem, make sure whatever you are pulling out doesn't create an erosion problem by removing too many roots.
3. Any chance you could post a picture of the slope? There are so many possibilities for you that many forum members could type all day, so a picture would be nice, if you can. If not, tell us the size, is it full of trees now? is it full of vines, grass? does it need brush cutting?
There are many knowledgeable people on this forum who have been in your gardening shoes before and can help. A little more info and, if possible, a picture will get you better answers from which you can make a decision on whether you want an all low-growing slope or stud it with shrubs, small native ornamental trees, etc.
Kindly,
Jane

Well, nhbabs and I were typing at the same time, lol. nhbabs gives good advice - your in good hands, lapoltba.

Wow, lots of responses! Thank you to everyone that took the time to write out such detailed suggestions.

I'll try to answer everything as i go here.

The "cleaning up" I did was just an initial hacking down of the dead junk that was laying around. It is obvious the previous owners never did anything to the hill. I'm not really sure what it was exactly. It was about 4' tall and had thick finger sized stalks. Most of had died and fallen down the hill creating an ugly tan-ish mat. I purposely didn't remove everything. My intent was to chop it up and leave it in place to act as mulch to retain the soil. The root system seems to be well developed and I didn't touch that. There was also a bunch of garbage, bottles, plastic baseball bat etc. strewn about that I wanted to get rid of.

I'll try to get some pictures when I get home so you have something to work with. The hill is behind the house and gets full sun most of the day. At the bottom of the hill is a curtain drain that drains water away from the house. There is quite a bit of water on the property, but the soil is quite stable.

The hill isn't so steep that it would be impossible to mow it down once a year, which I would expect to have to do. It isn't quite as steep as the picture nhbabs posted. I understand trees/saplings are going to try to take hold eventually. I am from the Adirondacks and any untended field turns to a sapling forest in just a few short years.

I think that pretty much covers the questions/concerns at the moment. I will definitely try to get some pictures when I get home tomorrow.

The description makes me nervous. Any chance the dead stalks are bamboo? Japanese knotweed?

I'm pretty sure it's not bamboo, but i'm no expert. There are several "pricker" berry bushes of some kind though.

I kind of went crazy with the pictures. A link is attached to the gallery for you to look through. I started at the back door of the house on the porch, facing the hill. The progression is basically walking to the left side of the hill, up to the top and back down the right side. There are also a few pictures from the driveway on the side of the house and one from the road.

I cleared most of the left side of the hill, but the right side hasn't been touched. There is obviously a huge mix of weeds, possibly some kind of plantings, berry bushes, and a couple purposefully planted trees. I am not knowledgable enough to pick out what is what though.

*just realized that the album didn't keep it's order after I uploaded. You should be able to get a good idea of the layout though.

Here is a link that might be useful: Minus.com Image Gallery

This post was edited by lapoltba on Tue, Apr 30, 13 at 20:36

Great photos! It makes it much easier to offer suggestions. You look to have a small birch tree on the cleaned up side (which I would have called the right side viewing it from the house?) near the drain, and another in the center of the clump of bushy stuff, at least some of which looks like wild blackberry (the prickery stuff.) The trees may have planted themselves as they are early species to move into disturbed ground.

I would probably start by clipping the blackberries each to ground level and then putting a small amount of glysophate herbicide (main ingredient in old style Round-up, but it also can be bought less expensively as generic) on the cut stump with a foam brush. It may take a couple applications, but this will kill the prickers without disturbing the soil, unless you want to wait to see if they produce fruit.

Then I would start taking photos of the other plants you have and post them here or the "name that plant" forum, since you may have some nice wildflowers already such as goldenrod or asters and you seem to have a fair amount of meadow grass already. You may not need to do much other than mow once or twice a year, add a few plants that you start from seed (like Rudbeckia black-eyed susans or Echinacea, also daisy-like or butterfly weed, a type of orange milkweed) to dress things up as long as a wild looking meadow look is what you want.

Actually, that was the side I didn't do anything to other than cut a few of the larger berry bushes at the bottom of the hill. That birch is in rough shape and without staking it up and waiting several years, it won't survive. I would just assume take it down since it's not really in a great location anyway. I hate to do it since they are becoming relatively scarce due to disease and insects.

This picture http://minus.com/lbx4OfKnwRF4xc shows what are definitely blackberry/raspberry bushes. I wouldn't mind having them, in fact I would welcome having a ton more, just not here. Being on the slope they will not be easy to get to when the mature and have fruit. If there was a way to transplant them or something I would love to hear it. I had tried it in the past, but the only way I have ever seen them grow was by accident and negligence. Based on the size of a few of the lower bushes, I would bet they may produce a limited amount of fruit. The smaller ones at the top of the hill however are definitely not mature enough from my experience.

Going off on a tangent... I loved having berry bushes growing up and we had a large sandy area on my parent's property that they grew like crazy in. They eventually began to die off and my dad chopped them all down. The began to come back by the time I went to college, but it took a while to get any amount of fruit from them. My last year at college I rented a small cottage on a back road that had the biggest patch of black raspberries I had ever seen. I started picking as soon as they began to ripen and then ever couple days for the next 3 weeks. I stopped for lack of room in the freezer for 1gal ziplock bags. I made at least a dozen pint jars of jam and a few quarts. I gave a bunch away but i'm hoarding the last few of the "good" batch for myself. :)

So in other words, I would love to have berry bushes, just not where they are.

A lot of what you see on the ground on the left side (looking from the house) is debris and not much in the way of live plants other than some weeds. Obviously it is still very early here and not much has come up yet though. The tree shown in the background of this picture http://minus.com/lbwhVJrx76OE9d appears to be planted from what is left of the mulch/preparation around the base.

This shot http://minus.com/lvFny84VUSjeW shows a rock swail that comes down from what is left of the last owners fish pond sort of thing. There is a reddish low lying plant growing on either side that I failed to get a close up picture of. It appears that it will look nice later in the spring but needs some weeding and/or mulching.

I will take your advice and try posting some pictures on the "name that plant" forum. In the meantime, would I benefit from getting some sort of tall meadow grass mix to put down in a few weeks?

*whoops, I wrote a book

There is nothing I can add to the all the great advice you've been given except an additional "Welcome to the forum!"
Molie

Well, that's quite a slope, lap... just for fun and to spark the imagine, have you Googled 'slope garden' in Google Images? Lots of interesting approaches. Sometimes an 'on sale' shrub or plant here and there every year, over time, could help to create an interesting garden if you are inclined to 'decorate' your slope.
Jane

Here is a link that might be useful: Slope garden, Google Images

My Mom always said you should live in a house for a year before you do anything, because it's hard to tell the weeds from the flowers until they bloom.

You mentioned a wildlower mix. Check out this:

http://www.americanmeadows.com/wildflower-seeds/northeast/native-northeast-wildflower-seed-mix

You can get cheaper mixes at Home Depot but they aren't all native.

Massachusetts has a website where they recommend plants for erosion control:

http://www.mass.gov/czm/coastal_landscaping/plants.htm

I think Showy Aster and Seaside Goldenrod might be good.

I asked a similar question and got some answers:

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/neweng/msg0315313615340.html

I notice gravel. Baptisia australis likes gravel, and is native.

Thank you again everyone!

I had searched google images for ideas a bit already. One of the first several pictures that came up was the terraced one. That was what I really wanted to do, but the time and expense just isn't an option right now. Maybe sometime down the road. The location of my septic system, house, and driveway make it difficult to get a machine in to do the heavy work as well.

I was looking around for mixes and found Ernst Conservation Seed. Their mix #181 "Native Steep Slope Mix with Annual Ryegrass" looks like it would fit the bill. At $16/lb it won't break the bank either. I am just wondering if the grass is too tall for what I want to do.

The soil is not really gravel I guess. I haven't figured out exactly what it is. It's like glacial till, with big stones/rocks, but it's not really that sandy. It seems to be well drained and I hear my curtain drain flowing most of the time. I have that to thank for a dry basement....

I've been told the same thing edlincoln, but i've also been told to just do what you want done. Maybe reckless advice, but that is usually how I end up going about things. I'm a bit stubborn. At this point, anything would be better than the mosh pit of "stuff" that's there.

As far as finding out what is weeds and what is not, well I'm not that concerned with it at this point. The neglect leads me to believe that most of it is weeds with a few spotty plantings that are getting crowded out.

I don't want to use roundup, but I was going to try the white vinegar thing and try to start fresh with a nice seed mix. I planned to lightly spread some peat mix over the top and then seed. I'm really just looking for a low cost, moderate effort, decent looking result. I can handle having to do some up keep, but an all out planted landscape is not what I am looking for.

For any wildflower mix to work, you have to start by clearing out the slope. Then get the seed to germinate on the slope, and keep the weeds out. That last is usually the deal breaker.

To begin at the beginning, practically every open site in the east wants to end up as climax forest. So what wants to grow there is the early succession woody plants - the woody weeds we get in flower beds. The things I pull are red cedar, wild black raspberry, wild cherry, oaks, maples, Virginia creeper, poison ivy, white pine, and various invasives. Pretty much the same junk as is currently there. To make it something else, and keep it something else is going to require work. Usually, the easiest way to do this work is by running a lawnmower around. If you are willing to mow the slope, that potentially short-circuits a lot of things. A rough meadow 'lawn' becomes a distinct possibility, which is what it sounds like you want. From what I've seen locally, it has to be done more often than the usual recommendation of twice a year, but less often than a regular lawn. However, if you can't mow the slope because it is too steep, the woody weeds are going to have to be controlled some other way. The options are herbicide, hand pulling, or planting something dense enough to be a weed suppressant. Personally, I'd be on the lookout for some ground cover junipers on sale.

The conservation seed site does say that the site will require regular maintenance to remove woody plants. Either burning or mowing works, but most people try to avoid situations where their house may catch on fire.

Heh, yeah burning isn't an option. I'm fine with running the string trimmer a few times a year, but it would be impossible to get a mower on it. At the same time I can keep an eye out for woody stuff like saplings and berry bushes.

I'm ok with doing work, but going all out on landscaping isn't really my thing.

http://minus.com/ldavlioDyo19y looks like it might be dewberry. I have a bunch of that growing in the back of my backyard next to a big patch of blackberries.

Well, instead of rushing and doing what I want, i've decided to do it the right way....

I started by raking out all the dead fallen debris and leaves. I'm going to concentrate on clearing all the berry bushes first and getting things manageable. If I can get things knocked down and the majority of the weeds under control I will try to start a fast growing grass temporarily. If it gets too late to start the grass, I will probably just cover it up with black plastic and seed in the fall with the conservation mix.

Besides that I should probably get a soil test done to see if I need to do anything with it. Owning a home is just an excuse to go buy more tools. :)

Thanks for the welcome everyone and I am glad I found the site. Tons of great information on here!