Best Plants for Hillside
There are rare yards that are completely even. Else, you will always find some kinds of slopes or hills that may make your gardening journey a bit challenging. Also, it is never a good idea to use just one type of plant on a hillside. Therefore, if you are looking for the best hillside plants to make your garden eye-catching, you are precisely at the right place.
One of the significant challenges regarding gardening plants for hillsides is erosion control. Erosion may tend to displace the soil of your garden and, as a result, expose the delicate roots of your plants. To avoid this, it is essential to select the best hillside plants that will enhance the look of your garden and save you from the hassle of erosion control.
Best Hillside Plants:
Here is the list of best hillside plants to ease out your gardening process and control erosion:
1. Big Blue Liriope:
Having grass-like foliage, a Big Blue Liriope is as pretty as a picture and clustered ground cover plant with an evergreen look. You can easily use these plants as some ground cover plants in masses for the hillsides and slopes.
It grows for almost 12-15” tall and vast. It can easily grow in either partial sun or even in a shady area. This makes it suitable for practically every kind of weather. What makes it one of the best hillside plants is the fact that it is almost maintenance-free. Also, it is remarkably tough and can survive through full sun or deep shade that can be grown on clay or sand. All these factors make this relatively easy to grow and handle.
2. Forsythia:
If you think that you are limited to just ground covers when it comes to plants for hillsides, you may be wrong. Ground covers are excellent for fighting erosion; however, short shrubs can also do this job really well.
Forsythia is kind of a shrub and is one of the best hill plants because the weeping from this plant can prove to be an excellent choice in order to retain soil on a hillside. Bonus, this shrub flowers in the early spring and increase the beauty of the hillside.
3. Pachysandra Ground Cover:
Proven as an evergreen ground cover, this plant is low maintenance and super easy to grow. You will need plant spacing for this one for almost 12 inches apart, and 100 plants can easily cover 100 square of foot area. Yes, this is how good its covering is.
Bonus, this plant can easily retain its beauty even in adverse conditions, so you don’t need to run after it when the surrounding conditions are not in favor. It gives a solid glossy look to your hillside and grows almost 6 to 8 inches tall.
4. Creeping Junipers:
These plants give you landscape and new cover throughout the year because they are evergreen. These are some of the ground covers that like a lot of suns. One of the best parts about these plants is that they are vigorous growers and help suppress unwanted plants or common lawn weeds.
Creeping Junipers are popular because of their role in taming even the steep hills and making life hard for the weeds and unwanted plants to grow. Additionally, they are considered superior to grass because they don’t need to be mowed when in order to beautify the landscape.
5. Veronica Georgia Blue:
It is also one of the ground covers and has light green leaves giving it an entirely fresh and beautiful look. The leaves turn into coppery bronze in the fall, and their blue flowers open freshly in the spring.
One of the reasons why Georgia Blue is one of the best hillside plants is that it is absolutely deer and rabbit-free. So if you are in an area where your plants are always under attack by these creatures, Veronica Georgia Blue solves this problem for you.
6. Liriope Genus:
The Liriope Genus is a ground cover that is tough for the various surroundings and drought tolerant. The look maybe like grass, but in reality, the Liriope Genus is more like herbaceous flowering. They are on the list of the best hillside plants because of their ability to prevent erosion and help with weed control.
Bonus, you can plant it almost any time of the year, from fall to spring. This plant will also grow quite rapidly and show the grown flowers in its plantation’s first year. Not only this, the plants grow the best in the shade location. However, they are also able to tolerate full sun without any difficulty.
7. Japanese Maple:
If you want to add some beauty and colors to your hillside, the Japanese Maple will solve your problem. The Japanese Maples are a more delicate and dwarfed version of a classic Maple tree. They have smaller and ornate leaves which come in different colors like green, red, orange, gold, and purple.
Like the classic Maples, the Japanese Maples also do quite well on the hillsides or slopes. Some of their varieties grow to be around 8 feet tall, while the others grow almost 25 feet tall.
8. Climbing Roses:
Any part of the garden is incomplete without adding roses to it. We all do acknowledge this fact, don’t we? Climbing roses are one of the best hillside plants that you can select. The reason is they are challenging for different conditions and can retain their shape and color.
The climbing roses also have multiple blooms that add color and life to the hillside or the landscape. However, you will need a sunny spot for the climbing roses to keep them happy and blooming.
9. Spotted Dead Nettles:
These kinds of plants are also used as the ground covers. They are specifically used and spread in a patch of ground or hillside which will otherwise remain bare. The plants will be evergreen in the warm and sheltered areas of your hillside or land. However, anywhere else, they can be semi-evergreen.
The plants and the flowers they grow make a significant impact on the beauty of the landscape. They are also relatively small compared to the other plants and can grow up to 1 foot mostly.