I have a walkout basement, so I have a few steep hills in my back
yard. One is behind the garage, that comes down 11 feet in about a 16
or 18 foot length, and the other is a hill with an even steeper slope
outside my main level patio door. The hill behind the patio door I
think will be dealt with when I put a deck in this summer. The one
behind the garage has me stumped though.

the width of the strip is a little more than the width of my 3 car
garage which it is behind. The neighbor's yard slopes about the same,
so there's no help there for designing a solution. As I said, it's
around 15 or so feet from top of the hill to the bottom, one edge is
just the lot line and the other edge is the side of my house. So it's
just a smallish square area.

I'm not worried about "using" the space. My only concern is to be
able to do something other than grass - I'm tied of cutting these
hills. I can put something down to let all the grass die, but what
can I do then to keep the dirt from eroding away? Would some type of
landscaping barrier, covered with decorative stones or something,
work? Anyone have any links for anything to give me ideas? I've been
googling, but most of my hits are for retaining walls and such,
something I would rather not spend the money for in this instance with
the deck going in.

Thanks for any suggestions.

John