You still don't have any pics up but I have a decent sloping hill on one side of the house and we are going to landscape it. Maybe some terraced retaining wall, maybe not.

The problem with growing grass on a decent slope goes beyond mowing. You need to water the snot out of it because of runoff. If you don't have an in ground sprinkler system and have a couple dry years or underlying clay soil, you can get large dead patches on a slope pretty easy, especially if it gets all day sun.

We have battled a few dry years in a row here and my slop looks like crap after lots of watering and care. So we are going to landscape with maybe the wall, some mulch, rock, build a water fountain and pond, some bonsai trees and be done with it. But ours is pretty steep.

If you dont mind putting money into it, you might want to think about just landscaping the hill part.

We have a couple smaller fruit trees and bees are not a problem because we pick the trees clean before the fruit starts falling. Not as easy with a full grown tree though.

 

Thanks for the tips Vader. I've been cutting the grass on the hill 2x a week. It doesn't get much sun, so it's not burnt... but it does seem to look a lot nicer now than 3 months ago.

I was actually considering the possibility of turning the hill into a vegetable garden... just with a walkway through it horizontally. I think it would be a good use of space, but i'm not sure about the 'runoff' as you mentioned. I suspect that would ruin my 'good' idea.

I will get pics.