our house has basically an 8 ft cliff in the back yard that a wall was built against creating a back courtyard. behind that, is the nightmare hell strip that backs up to a golf course. in the hell strip there is a huge thicket of primrose jasmine, hackberry, and literally 8-12 foot tall pokeweed. it is not flat. I would really love it to be a fairy garden type area my daughter could play with a playhouse, flowers,hu paths etc. i have no idea how to start with this. my initial thought was to just chainsaw everything down and send it through a mulcher, let it sit for a year then start planting. the problem is backing up onto a golf course and being on top of a cliff I can not bring a truck up to dump mulch on it and the existing soil seems to be sand? maybe from the builders. is there someone I should just hire? should I just give up? thanks for any thoughts.
I would start by selectively removing invasive plants, dead ones, and anything that is too large for the area. Then you can trim up some of the desirable plants and get a better understanding of how you want it to look. You should have some gaps after that to plant what you want.
I agree. Adding to say I think tackling the primrose jasmine as the first priority for invasive-plant removal will make the whole area immediately more accessible to work within, and might give some lurking desirable plants enough room to make themselves more known. (Pic 3 looked like there might be some turk’s cap in there)
Yes there’s actually tons of Turks and lantana around. I am just afraid of nandina coming in if the primrose goes. I’d take 10000 primrose over one nandina I HATE those fuckers
I'll tell you exactly how I dealt with this: I've paid people to dig out poison ivy and cow parsley by hand, cut and grind stumps of all hackberries, and scrape the rest for 3 years in a row. I am finally getting to a place where it's not coming back nearly as thick.
We also paid for someone to chainsaw a thicket of hackberries the first year in our house. Totally worth it, was much easier to manage the new growth after the clearing.
I’m no expert but is there a chance that removing all of those plants there would destabilize that retaining wall and create some fairly big problems?
Yeah that was one of my worries too. But I actually think the wall is mostly cosmetic. The other sides are just rock.
My first thought was whether goats for hire were a thing here - goats (or sheep) clearing overgrown lawns are one of my favorite niche YouTube genres
I hired goats for my thicket. Nobody in Austin really does it, but I found some and convinced them. I had 4 goats for 2 weeks and they didn't make a huge difference ☹️ You'll need to find a whole herd (20 or more). I also found out the hard way that they won't touch cow parsley.
Goats would be easy and adorable.
Right? And let the op see the canvas they’re working with.
Just after I commented, i ran across this: https://www.reddit.com/r/oddlysatisfying/s/kWmNaF1CjZ (mute it the music is terrible)
I would look at it as a sculpture and begin in one corner removing the ugly and pruning up the existing plants into something nice. Reuse the trimmings as mulch. I'd make paths with some secluded landing areas with chimes or a bench. The logic being that those plants are already thriving, so why tear it all down when you can enjoy what is free?
If you have the spare change, hire a landscaper for design and work. If not, start small. Pick a spot, maybe closest to house, and just clear that out. Trim anything you want to keep; trim/remove anything you don't. I'd wait for a good rain, since it'll be MUCH easier to remove if the ground is wet. Repeat as needed.
Goats
Brush hog
Rent a DR mower to zip thru and take it all out. Then cover with garbage bags (held down with rocks) to kill any growth coming back. Then in spring, start planting what you want.
Cardboard with topsoil and mulch smothers the plants below while adding compost to the soil.
This. Plus use this type of product below the cardboard. It can work wonders. Just don't let the sun fry your cardboard up, keep it at least a bit moist like rain would. Use landscape staples to keep the cardboard down. I've also used burlap to hold down the layer of soil.
Maybe tear it all out every six months to clear and break up the soil a bit again. Repeat until satisfied.
.MicroLife
Not garbage bags. You don’t want to kill off the beneficial organisms in the soil. That and the plastic will just further compaction and make it tougher for “nice” things to grow..
Goats
Goats