(upbeat music) >>Every garden is unique and has its own unique situations or challenges.

In my garden, I have some areas that I've had to use stone or block to retain the soil.

But over here, this is such a gentle slope that my idea is to use ground covers.

If you have a slope, you have a lot of runoff.

So that means you're going to lose a lot of soil and nutrients and water that you want to retain in your garden.

So I want to really take care of this situation.

As far as ground covers, there are many options that you can choose.

If you have a sunnier situation, maybe you can use something like this sedum, or a veronica.

Shadier situation, you can use something like this little ophiopogon.

It gives you a nice grassier look.

Now, you've got to remember this does spread slowly.

So keep that in mind.

The nice things about ground covers is that as they are growing, they will root out and start holding the soil.

So here, one thing I have done is, instead of using that is I'm using the cheapest nursery that I have, and I went through my garden and found other things that could work here.

So I have found disporopsis pernyi.

Gets about 12 to 16 inches tall.

And as it's growing, it does really, really hold in the soil.

These do have a nice woody roots.

Another little native that I like is Iris cristata with its nice blue blooms early in the spring.

And again, as the rhizomes spread, they hold on to the soil.

So I will be planting these here.

(tool scraping) (tool scraping) Now as these grow and spread, I want this to grow out and hold on to the hillside as it's growing.

So don't plant directly at the edge.

Give the plant space to spread out and get those roots really holding the soil.

Just remember, doing that you're conserving not only water, but you're also conserving all the materials and organic material that you have in your garden, and that is very important.

So I hope that everybody will just think about some ground covers and go out and get your hands dirty.