It's about 100ft wide (trail in center) and about 50ft deep.
I need to keep the woods from invading my yard
+4
I live in the woods, we have a decent yard we keep maintained. The woods in the back have vines, trees, weeds, etc that are constant work to keep cut back. They keep trying to invade my yard. We don't want to do anything to completely block the view or wildlife, or to change the openness to our trail (down the center of the backyard), as we us to access walking trails for our dogs. We've considered a (very) short retaining wall...just not sure.... any advice would be much appreciated!
By keeping the yard maintained you should be able to keep trees and things at bay. By keeping it mowed, you should keep any trees trying to grow without the sunlight on leaves it needs to survive. The same goes with vines, although they can be a lot more tenacious. If you have vines that keep dropping up in the same place, cut the down fairly close to the soil and treat the open stump with something like vinegar or a weed killer by painting it on the stump. You may need to do it more than once, so leave enough above the soil so you can cut it again and treat on a fresh cut. By painting it on, you are not getting it on the existing grass surrounding it, so it will not die. I had a wild grape stump that was huge, but it kept putting out new shoots all the time, even getting under my neighbors siding and covering her huge lilac bush. It took nearly a year to kill it, but it has been nearly three years now without a shoot. It may take a bit of work, but maybe that will help keep back the wilderness from your beautiful yard.
What a lovely view. Would a border of good sized rocks/boulders help?