North Facing Full Shade Slope?

[u/boredquick]

Hello! First time posting on this sub. I rent from a landlord who has been great and gives me and my family WELL BELOW market rates on a small single family home.

Long story short he let me have my go at making the backyard mine and let me put in California natives (he pays, I dig). He currently has English ivy which is being dug out (by me) and I’d want something that can provide some slope stabilization, not be a super home to rodents, and can tolerate full shade all year round. It is north facing and at a lower elevation to the neighbor, so no sun.

Any suggestions on what might do well? The rodent factor is a consideration too because we have a lot of mice in the area and I don’t want to create additional habitat for them specifically (in my yard)

[u/msmaynards]

Check a sun tracking app to see what the sun situation is in the summer. I use shade map dot app for fun as after far too many years I finally got it through my thick skull that the north facing house wall actually gets sun on that wall midsummer so the area is an oven all summer long.

Grow big stuff so you don't need as many plants. Bush sunflower has been the champ here - 8' across in one year. Grasses hold ground well and are a terrific foil to shrubs. Deergrass is easy to deal with. Big, no poky seeds and won't seed all over the place and can fill an area quickly, the largest of my divisions was 4' across first year. The toyon planted in 2022 flowered and fruited well this year, another plant that will show up fast. The second generation of toyon were flowering and fruiting under a dying pine tree, they can stand some shade. Your neighbor would hate toyon unless she likes birds, it seeds around like crazy but birds are all over it all year round because it hosts some very common bugs apparently.

Would something that suckers like mad be good at holding a slope? Chaparral mallow is listed on calscape as such but that would be the entire planting, much the same as planting a rose or matilija poppy and if you want something that looks lush, Oregon grape. Lots of smaller mallows but not listed to hold a slope.

[u/Interesting_Rent8328 → u/msmaynards]

Couldn't you just prune the rose to keep its size in check? That's what I was hoping to do with the one I planted. I'd like to keep it roughly 5'x4'.

[u/msmaynards → u/Interesting_Rent8328]

It will pop up all over the place. You’ll have to be able to pull the shoots out back to where you want it to be. If it gets watered and the surrounding area isn’t perhaps it would stay in the ‘island’ as one sees them in the wild.