Dealing with a small patch of sloping land

In front of our house there's a patch of grass (of the "we dont' know what else to do with this, variety") on a slope. Two straight sides are about 3m each, with a right angle between the road and a picket fence, with the curve of the drive finishing it off. The road is at the bottom of the slope. There's maybe 1m of elevation to the back of the area.

Its a right pain as it's too small and steep for a lawn mower to deal with easily, so it tends to get left till its meadow like and then strimmed. I'd like to do something a bit more interesting with it, but everytime I try and come up with ideas I start getting paranoid that as soon as we take the grass off the whole lot will wash straight onto the road. Which wouldn't make us very popular...

How much of a slope can you get away with before you have to do something "proper" like terracing? Would weed suppressing fabric work to hold the soil in place until plants got established? If we used weed suppressing fabric, would anything on top of it (gravel, etc) just slide off?

Oh - and to add to the challenges, there's a gas inspection box thing in the middle of it...

Anyone got any thoughts or suggestions?

 

Any chance of a photo?

What aspect is the grass, is it sunny/shady? What temperatures do you get in winter, I immediately thought of going for an arid bed, as it should be fairly free draining, and rocks can be used to retain the soil/gravel.

What types of plants do you like?

Sorry quite a few questions but it will help with some ideas.

 

Why not let it run to meadow? Strim it once in Autumn, sow wildflower seed in the spring. Nice and simple to maintain (no mowing) looks pretty once properly established, no digging. And your doing a bit for the local bees and butterflies etc etc.

Plenty of help online to get you going, here's just one site example.

http://www.veseys.com/ca/en/learn/guide/wildflower

Steve...