Alternatives to grass up a sloped front garden?

[MerylSqueak]

I'd love your ideas please.

It's quite a steep slope - maybe 30 degrees? We don't have money for landscaping.

I have tried to get wildflowers started but the soil is too rich for them and grass just takes over. It's very high and very grassy. It has lots of salad Burnet, ragged Robin and campion wjich are lovely. I tried I introducing poppies, oxeye daisies and cornflowers but they've just been eaten, I think by rabbits (we live opposite a village green)

DH is adamant he doesn't want a grass lawn. I'm not happy with how it looks. I don't know what to do. I've thought about planting it up with garden plants but I'm worried it looking terrible in winter. I'm also worried about the soil working it's way down.

I think it might get easiest to go back to just grass, although I don't want to.

What would you do?

I’d go for something like this, a mixture of shrubs & flowering plants, but maybe if you post a picture of the slop & amount of space you have someone could come up with a solid plan for you.

I would do a mixture of heathers, ferns, small conifers, yew. And say cypress trees. Look at things that grow on the side of Scottish mountains. You will need things that have a compact, dense root system. Euonymus are cheap and evergreen. Easy to keep clipped.

This product looks interesting to me dirtlocker.com and can be shipped to the uk.

Prostrate shrubs, like cotoneaster 'Coral Beauty'. You can get low-growing rosemary varieties too, and adding things like thyme and other spreading ground cover would be nice.

Google 'red creeping thyme". I'd love this instead of my grass!

I'm a massive fan of herbs. Some like bay, sage and rosemary are evergreen others are perennial like mint, lavender and chives. Plant them close and you'll have to do a bit of weeding but not much. They tend to spread forming interesting patches. Mint will spread madly so contain it in a pot if you don't want that to happen.

Poppies and cornflowers are corn field weeds, annuals that take advantage of bare soil to germinate. They won’t persist in a perennial grass sward. Meadow (ie permanent grass) flowers are mainly perennial, like your salad burnet. If you’re happy with the height of the campion, try Meadow cranesbill, Field scabious, ladys bedstraw and the like. Shorter permanent grass plants include self heal, daisy, white clover, birds foot trefoil.

A bank of primroses would look lovely in the spring.

Personally, i’d strip the grass and cover it with trailing plants, aubretia, prostrate rosemary and so on. With miniature daffodils poking through in the spring

Thank you for all your ideas. I know I should enjoy planning it but I just wish someone would do it for me. Or maybe a magic wand. Very un gardeny of me!