For your shady areas you would probably do best with a fine fescue. Intrigue Chewings fescue is one of the best and supposedly has shown some ability to fend off weeds by exuding some substance from its roots. You can look up "intrigue" and "allelopathy" for some discussion of that. For the majority of your lawn that is in full sun, that's a tough one. The best grass for choking out weeds in full sun would be KBG. Unfortunately there is a lot of discussion out there on how it is futile to try to overseed KBG into a rye lawn because something about the rye prevents the KBG from establishing. Rye does well in full sun but is sensitive to heat and will not spread to choke out weeds. The most drought tolerant are the fine fescues, but they do better in shade. Still, from what I understand they don't actually die in the sun, just lose some color. Chewings and Hard fescues won't spread much but Creeping Red will (though not as fast as KBG), and Creeping Red apparently does the best of the three in sun. I settled on Garnet creeping red myself this year. I'm reluctant to make any strong suggestion because I'm really not sure how it will work out, but I think if I were you I would blend say 60% creeping red and 40% chewings fescue and overseed with that. If you go back to NTEP and focus on the chewings and creeping red fescues I'm sure you'll find some other good ones. Intrigue was not in the most recent trials, but I believe the previous set. Garnet is fairly new and sometimes shows up in the results as "CRF 1-03" (I'm assuming that by overseeding you mean keeping the existing grass and sowing new seeds into it, rather than killing off what you have and starting over.) But again, I'm not real comfortable with this advice, just the best I can seem to come up with. Hopefully someone else here has some other ideas. Paul

You have not said how steep your hill is. You can have very steep hills that do not erode without adding man made structures. The key is to keep every inch of the ground well covered with plants. Usually you will only see bare erosion spots if water is rushing down a specific point. You mentioned the down spouts, but it is not likely that they would cause the whole hill to erode. You might think about grading the flat back yard a bit so that all the water flows down to one point. Then at this one point, create a rock slide using larger rocks so that the water does not move the rocks. In effect you create a water fall but add enough large rocks so that it prevents erosion. the rocks don't have to be too big, just big enough and irregular enough so that they are stable. I have a slope on my property that is very steep - probably drops 10 ft for every 5 ft. It is made up of rock and soil covered with grass/weeds/golden rod. No errosion at all.

Bob64, I think your strategy has to depend on how large a battle you are fighting. If you have yard, or even an acre or two, and you have the time then you might eradicate the invasive weeds and simply monitor the area to make sure they don't become established again. In that case you can plant anything you like and make sure it survives by taking good care of it. On the other hand, if you have acres or simply a little more land than you can really carefully monitor all the time, then you have a different problem - how to eradicate the invasive weeds and replace them with something to keep them at bay even if you can't be vigilant all the time. The more your situation resembles the latter case, the more you should look at the really aggressive native plants. If I have a small area of woodland to maintain, I might rely on violets, mayapple, or other relatively small plants that can be somewhat aggressive in the garden, plus my careful attention to the area. However, if I have a couple of acres where I'd eradicated russian olive, Canada Thistle, or Japanese knotweed and wanted to be sure they wouldn't return, I'd put in the most aggressive native plants I could find. I would much rather have a large stand of Canada Goldenrod than Canada Thistle (the thistle isn't really from Canada - it is european/asian). Even the most aggressive natives are going to take some time to become established to the point they will be much help at keeping out non-native plants, but they are a lot better than more delicate native plants would be. If you visit natural areas you find that the vegetation is largely made up of large stands of 'aggressive' natives (I'd call them 'vigorous' or 'dominant', not 'aggressive') especially where there has been some disturbance in the past. The less dominant plants fill in between the more dominant plants, or gradual succession creates niches for less dominant plants to grow, so on a large enough scale you find plant diversity even with the dominant natives. In fact, i think in many cases the dominant native plants help support the less dominant ones (think about a prairie - what is more aggressive than prairie grasses? yet there are lots of wildflowers, too. Same goes for a woodland - dominated by trees by full of other plants) I am not claiming that there has never been a situation where a native plant was so invasive that it caused ecological damage, but I think the cases are rare, and mostly a result of our perception of things. Around here (PA) eastern Hemlock would inevitably take over most of the forest if there was no disturbance. It might take 1000 years, but it would happen. Does anybody claim that hemlock is invasive? The hemlocks, like the goldenrod, blackberries, black locust, and oaks before them are part of natural succession. I think most of the native plants we perceive as invasive are merely filling in their niche at their allotted time in the development of the ecosystem. I am not recommending them all as garden plants, nor denying that they can take over pretty thoroughly, but just pointing out that they too, in turn, will be replaced, and in the mean time they play an important role in the ecosystem. Non-native plants are another story, sicne they may not easily be replaced by succession, they are far more likely to COMPLETELY take over, and they generally play only a limited role in supporting wildlife or otherwise being part of the ecosystem.

I am interested in any natives that can grow in my area. My guess is that most things that can survive Ontario can survive in NY. I have not had a lot of luck with seed so don't knock yourself out on my account but I would gladly take any native seeds you have to offer. We have a lot of invasives (but many less than a few years ago) but also a lot of natives. Our volunteer natives include: Red Osier dogwood, blood root, golden rod, jewel weed, mayapple, various ferns, elderberry (I think), joe pye weed, bidens discoidia (sp?), virginia creeper, inkberry (I think), cherry trees and trout lilly and, of course, poison ivy. I am forgetting a bunch and have yet to identify a bunch. We have lots of blackberries but I am not sure of their provenance. We have also introduced some natives including: black eyed susans, trilliums, coreopsis, witch hazel, blueberry, assorted viburnums, white pines, duck potato, trumpet vine (beginning to wonder if we should have done that one), jacobs ladder, and some other things I am forgetting. We also have many junipers that were part of a landscaping plan a long time ago but I have no idea as to their provenance.