well - i am a little confused on what you are specifically asking for.

you have weeds and brush now? if so, i would probably start by burning it off. i personally think that burning is the easiest way to control most woody vegetation. (dont light a match but learn how to do a controlled burn - take a workshop and/or volunteer at a local nature center..)

after i cleared the area, i would plant a mixture of native grasses and wildflowers. what particular type of grasses and flowers depends upon the soil, light and water conditions that exist there.

starting a wildflower meadow is not going to be any less weedy than getting grass to grow there. and areas that were already a weed bed are harder to get established. although a wildflowers once established will be easier to maintain than turf grass because they will only need to be mowed or burned once a year. the hard part is getting something established.

there are many resources with descriptions of how to get a prairie started...

Here is a link that might be useful: establishing a prairie

I was hoping there might be an easier alternative to buying a tiller or something of that sort and clearing the weeds out before I can put down wildflower seed in order to have something growing (besides weeds) until I can properly landscape with terraces etc.

I have an idea that I think would look gorgeous, lots of small terraces up the hill, some stairs leading to the top on one side, etc... but I know that is going to cost more than I can spend right now.

I've had wildflowers in a home before, but the area was much smaller, not on an incline, and it wasn't an issue to remove the weeds because it could be done manually quite easily. The flowers were beautiful and easy to maintain which was why I was thinking it might be a good idea to try again.

Unfortunately in my area, I can not burn the weeds away. If I lived outside the city limits I could.

Thanks for providing the link. I'll check out the information!

actually a tiller can often times make weeds worse. many weeds and woody plants will sprout via runner or rhizomes and tilling will create more edges to sprout. and tilling will bring buried and dormant seeds to the surface. i generally wouldnt reccomend tilling except to turn a cover crop...

you could smother with newspapers and cardboard, mulch heavily and then cover the mulch with a erosion fiber blanket tacked in place to hold the mulch on the slope. let that set for one growing season and then plant right into mulch and the blanket. it may be a rather large area for this method but you could break it up and do it one third at a time.

dont till it, its a hill. it will fall and cause u more trouble than what u have now.

kill it with roundup or some other herbicide 3 times next year then throw ur seed on in the fall.

remember that wash will happen so maybe after its dead, and u throw ur seeds on a damp (but not heavy) rainly fall day and stamp it down like a Bison would (kids are good for that).

i would also try and burn off the duff pre herbicide...

froggy

I too have a steep slope that is rather sandy (we live in Plymouth about a mile from the ocean) that we are planning on planting. I'm hoping Zinnias will do well, as well as California poppies, Oriential Poppies, Cosmos, etc.

Any other plant suggestions for a wildflower garden would be appreciated. The hill is very steep and difficult to walk on so the lower the maintenance the better.

18 yrs ago. wow! well, this is my biggest garden inquiry these days. my side yard of full sun has a huge hill and I want to plant a cut flower garden there. it’s covered in brush and weeds. we have been using it to burn brush around the yard so some of the soil in that burn area will probably be great but otherwise our soil is very sandy and just tested an area and slightly acidic. I am not sure about tilling it. I like the idea of cardboard and mulch and covering with a blanket to keep in place (never thought of the ground fabric to be used like that) however does this method mean I cannot plant this season? sad. It will be progress for sure so that’s excellent. curious if I can, cardbaord and add multch and loam (or maybe just loam) with blanket over to allow for a growing season this year. we have some compost we make but it’s a large area like 43’ high and 86’ long. My hope is the cut flowers will help offset these garden-scaping tasks $$. So, curious what you ended up doing and how it went?! thanks all. Any advice would be great. zone 6a so my growing season isn’t long. I would like to start asap but feel stuck on the route to take, please help :)