Is the bottom of the hill behind the fence at the ground level of the fence? Touching the fence boards? If it is on the boards of the fence at all it will cause the boards to rot out pretty quickly. Can you go behind the fence and put in a french drain to direct the flow of water from the neighbor's property? That would eliminate a lot of the flow of water. My SIL has a very steep bank at the back of her property and has had success with the colored shredded mulch staying in place. It kind of mats down and locks in place.

I know how much people on here hate landscape fabric but I have had professional landscape fabric for 20 years on the beds around our home and it has worked wonderfully. We have raked all of the decaying pine bark mulch off of it every 5 yrs or so and re-mulched. It is made out of woven plastic like fibers and is not deteriorated at all and if any weeds come up in the mulch they are easy to pull out. I have only had weeds come up from the ground at the trunks of the foundation plantings or sometimes at the front edges of the fabric along the sidewalk but not very often.

Nope, there is a little gap between the ground and the bottom of the fence boards. I installed the fence basically midway up the hill, as that is where my property line is. I could possibly install a french drain, but would really like to avoid that. I may try the shredded mulch like you said. I used to have a bunch of the shredded mulch but replaced with nugget mulch this year and it gets washed away easily with storms.

I would like to avoid the landscape fabric just because I have no idea what I would like to plant in this area and I feel like it may be a pain with the fabric down. My mind could be changed though if this may be the better route then newspaper. Another concern is that my very hard, red clay soil would stay the same and not get any of the benefit from the mulch/compost.

Would you guys install some edging in between the mulch bed and the rest of the back yard at the bottom of the hill? Or just keep it edged with a weed whacker?

I have never had good luck with black plastic edging--I can't get it to lay smoothly without weird bump outs. I have a little dug out ditch around most of my beds. It is easy to clean out every spring if needed and the grass on the edge is cut when I mow--I just put one mower tire in the ditch and drive along.

My front yard has a downhill slope, and you definitely want the shredded redwood to prevent your mulch from eroding. I found that I had to water and walk on it to help it stay in place. My DH installed a short brick border all around the perimeter, next to the sidewalk, and it really doesn't prevent any erosion, but he thinks it's useful ;-)

I don't recall the conclusion to your previous post, are you interested in continuing the retaining wall so it's the same level all the way across? It seems like the current design allows for easy mowing, but completing the wall seems like a more aesthetic/less erosion solution if you are planning to eliminate the grass.

I was basically just looking for suggestions on what to do for that area of my yard. It seems like most people vote mulch over pine straw, and I'm still not sure if I would do weed fabric or newspaper/cardboard to kill the grass.

I do like the idea of completing the retaining wall, but I think I would have to keep it relatively low (1-2 blocks tall, like it is at the very end). This is mainly because I believe I would have issues tying it in to my fence at the end, as there will still be the hill on the other side of the fence. Am I right? I guess I could dig out a bunch of the hill and move the retaining wall back, but that's quite the project and will cost quite a bit of money.

I like Yardvaarks idea.

Parehm,

There's a product relatively new on the market that acts as a mulch, but in a blanket form. If you like the idea of synthetic weed fabric, but are concerned about getting rid of it in the future, this product is an idea. It's biodegradable, so will break down over time.

www.woven-earth.com

One potential issue is if you don't like the look of it, you may have to cover it with a thin layer of bark/chips you do like. If you do that, you may find the bark washing down the hill like you've mentioned. Just based on the pictures, the color may coordinate with your fence and retaining wall, though. I also don't know if the stuff is dense enough to actually kill the grass underneath it.

I use the plastic edging around a garden that's on a similar slope in my yard to keep sheet water from flowing through and washing out the mulch. Given your neighbors' yards appear to be draining through the area and the amount of rain you get in NC, I'm betting you have a lot of water rushing through there at times. BUT if you completely blocked off the whole area with plastic edging, it would flow right over and do absolutely no good (not to mention ticking off the neighbors in the process). Therefore, you could divide the area into three or four beds, leaving at least a couple feet in between to allow water to rush through the grassed or rock channels. You can then mulch the beds without too much water running the gardens and washing out the mulch. I don't know how much water comes through that area, so I'll leave a necessary size of the beds and channels to you.

This may not be the most aesthetically pleasing way to do this but it may help keep the mulch in place. If you do go through with this, be sure to watch the edging you buy. At least one big box seller with orange aprons, in addition to its cheap stuff, offers a "professional grade" in a larger bundle that's of much much better quality (taller, thicker, heavier, more rubbery) for not much, if anything, more. In addition to lasting longer, it's a lot easier to install IMO.