As the rains approach the Bay Area and we continue to work on our landscaping plan in parallel with the house construction, we took some extra precautions to prevent erosion of any soil into the creek.
Before we purchased the property, it was quite disturbing that the previous owner had basically used the creek as a dump for many decades. We extracted over 15 dump trucks of all sorts of junk - rusted old water heater, plumbing pipes, concrete, plastic containers, telephone post, batteries, cans, bottles, tires, refrigerator, barbed wire, sheet metal - along with a ton of dead branches.
We cleaned all this out over several months and are trying to restore the ivy the acts as a natural soil retainer. The trees should also thrive now that the dead branches are all pruned off.
Here is a photo of some heavy duty "jute netting" being secured along the bank. This netting is great for holding down the soil and allows the ivy underneath to grow through it. It has holes about 1" x 2" so we can plant some additional ivy in a few weeks when the rains start. It also biodegrades in a year. It is secured together with pegs. We purchased this at a local landscape building supply store called Peninsula Building Materials - a really amazing place where you can get great ideas on materials to work with landscaping. Home Depot unfortunately only has small rolls so best to go to the big specialized landscaping outfits. These rolls came in 6' x 250'. There are a lot on the Internet but shipping is expensive.
You can also see the bales of hay which are wrapped into tube like bundles that are used at the top of the bank to prevent any soil from leaking down. These were secured using 2 foot long rebar pounded through the bales and into the ground. Only the water can get through these from above.
