No-work cover for very steep slope

(Pittsburgh, PA, USA)

I live in Pittsburgh, PA. I have a very steep slope on the side of my property. All summer long, it is covered with the worst possible, thorny, tall weeds. The dirt in which the weeds grow is clay-like and dry. Anything I've tried to plant on the slope (including juniper) gets eaten up and killed by the weeds, even with a gardener helping me. The neighbors are complaining bitterly. I need your help!

I have read your site, and you say that planting on a very steep slope requires lots of maintenance. I have very little time. I would ideally like to cover up the whole slope with a black tarp and put astro-turf on top of the tarp, so that I have the look of grass without the labor. Will such a solution work? Will the hillside erode? Please provide specific advice on how I should go about this. I'm getting so desperate that I'm thinking about concrete :-)


Doug says you want me to tell you how to create a no-work ground cover for a very steep slope where nothing you've used before works and you don't want to spend any time on it. And you have a gardener and he/she can't do anything about this area.

Frankly, I don't have suggestions or solutions that will appeal to you nor can I provide you with "specific" advice on this problem other than to get a good landscape firm in to solve this problem with hardscape.