I have a few suggestions. I am near DC, so I know a few things that work in this area although I think your temperature swings are larger. First, I really love the wild look of the grass and the soft subtle shadings from gold to russet. It looks from a distance very lovely and a great transition from the lawn area to the woods. However, I think you are asking for a controlled wildness with little to no upkeep and no mulch. My instinct is that if you spread the low growing grass mix over that area, the more established grasses would beat them out. It would be patchy at best and you would have to weedwack anyway. Here are my suggestions. I think it would be lovely to plant that hill with daffodils -you would probably need hundreds - let them come up, then weedwack in early summer as the leaves of the daffodils die (don't cut beforehand or they will not store enough for next Spring). There is some type of attachment you can buy for a power drill/driver that will make the job super easy. The bulb forum is rather slow, but very knowledgeable. For summer to Fall, you would be stuck with what you have now. An alternate suggestion is to use cardboard/paper to smoother what is there and then plant perrenials with high sun/low water tolerance. There are lots of lovely hardy sedums and day lillies come to mind. I really love lavendar also. Maybe some bushes for height/erosion control. For that space, it would be a LOT of cardboard! The reason I suggest cardboard is you can use long garden staples to keep it down. It would also become dirt and need to be renewed to continue suppressing weeds. Big project every few years and to make it nice looking, I would layer fall leaves or mulch on top. Look up lasagna gardening for more details. Another choice is to buy a meadow mix, throw it out there and let the plants duke ii out --survival of the fittest! Hope my ideas are helpful! I am not so much trying to give exact instructions as to point you towards possible paths where further research can help you reach the best conclusion.

The shrubs growing on the slope look that they have been there quite a while and seem to be growing straight up. (Sometimes, if there is a bend like an old-fashioned walking stick handle in the stem near to the ground, that bend can indicate that the land is slumping.) About the tree roots showing: there's not a great deal of topsoil from what I could see so the roots have probably spread out to forage for food and water. A number of tree species have suface roots - some quite gnarled and obvious. Think swamp cypress for a start. Unless the trees are very tall and your local prevailing winds are fierce or unpredictable you aren't likely to get windthrow. On a slope such as yours I'd be looking for grooves cut by runoff from the top as the precursor to shallow gullying - and that didn't seem to be happening. Personally, I wouldn't spend on 'posh plants' for such a slope. I'd ask for 'pioneer-type' shrubs - preferably native to your area. If you have a native plants nursery near you - pick their brains. Grasses, creepers, low-nutrient environment shrubs and sub-shrubs. That soil is obviously not rich - it hasn't been colonised by much at all. If you need clues and there are cuttings at the sides of your roads check there for what will establish and thrive and stay seemly. (No one needs a slope covered in fire risk weeds!) When you visit with the plant place/s ask for SPECIFIC guidance on how to plant up a steep slope. If it has a high clay content - let them know because it will change what they will advise. If there is any better soil available on your lot, and you can spare some - mix it in with the slope soil when planting but don't bother putting in fine compost. All that happens is the plants grow out to the limits of the top grade environment and then either sulk or die. Think about buying your reveg plants in 'root trainer' tubes rather than big cans or baggies. They'll be younger and better equipped to strike out, rootwise. Hear you when you say you're budget-constrained. See if you can legally collect native seedlings of suitable plants, grow them on, then plant out. Sometimes a neighbour can be a good source. Under the bird feeder, in a garden, can be another - but expect a lot of berry-producing plants ;-) And, as the slope is a bit of a challenge - could you devise a ladder to get you upslope for planting? Or a scaffoldiong arrangement. Something with wide enough treads so you don't end up with anguished feet!

Fleemo, WHen the rain hits the top, it runs really fast down that hill, that is why he will have a hard time keeping grass on it, not impossible, but I can't even imagine mowing that. The idea of gardening on a hill, (he has a great hill), is to slow down the rain. I would plant some small trees, and under the trees, I would put rocks, sort of make it look like a rock garden. The trees will slow down the rain from the sky and also slow it down when it is running down hill. THen I would plant some shrubs, med sized and some tall ones, then I would plant some ornamental grasses, (there is a great variety out there), and finally, I would plant some flowering perenialls, like lantana, daylillies, St. Johns wart, ect. I don't rake the leaves, I let them stay on the hill and rot. So, make sure he picks some decidious trees, and some evergreens, like some kind of cypress. Try to get him excited about it, and start with the trees first, all those plants are expensive, especially when the hill is that big. It's all worth it in the end, each year everything will grow in more and look nice. It takes a while.

I am going to see how the dwarf mondo does, but my backup is going to be Vinca Minor. The biggest issue I've been having with the vinca minor is that since the hill is very steep, the soil around the plants washes away easy and exposes the roots sometimes and I have to go put more soil back around the plants. I also have animals digging up the hillside this fall. I'm guessing squirrels. And they have ripped up some of the plants in the process. I think vinca minor may have been a better choice as it probably would have established quicker and have been stronger. But I really wanted something that looked like grass as much as possible so it blended with the lawn below. I also currently have a bunch of variegated asian jasmine on another section of the hill. It seems to do really well at my location. But the jasmine is full exposed to the sun, and the place where I've been putting the mondo is more shady....so I'm not sure the jasmine would work as well there.