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[quote=Anonymous]I've been dealing with similar issues since I bought our current house five years ago, so I feel your pain! My topline thought -- this is a marathon, not a sprint. You're likely going to have to take a longer view because you're not going to solve this overnight.

Pokeweed is not invasive by definition, it's just aggressive -- it does have a lot of wildlife value, and if you have kids old enough to know not to eat strange berries, it's not hugely dangerous. (I assume your toddlers won't be foraging on their own back there!). That said, it is quite aggressive and the roots on those things are insane as you've found, so there's nothing wrong with getting rid of it/staying on top of it. Just know that you will likely keep getting new plants because the birds love the berries and will plant them for you. Unfortunately, same with poison ivy, also a native with great wildlife value so the birds love (and spread) the berries.

Is there a budget to hire professionals to do the removal? Large areas of poison ivy really are no joke -- you basically need to wear Tyvek suits. And 100% you cannot and should not try to flame weed poison ivy.

In terms of plants to replace, I agree with the PP who say don't use a landscape fabric that stays in place or you will likely live to regret it. It's different if you solarize a large area on the understanding that you will remove the solarizing material, but then you really do have to get on top of planting and mulching on a large scale or you will be back where you began.

You can try using large areas of cardboard (with all tape/plastic removed) covered by a very thick layer of heavy wood chips. This is the kind of quantity that you'd want delivered in a dumptruck in bulk, not in bags. You can work around plants that you plant to replace/stabilize the slope and as the cardboard and wood chips break down, you can plant more plants and the ones you have will spread.

In terms of great native plants that are aggressive and like part-shade/shade and dry to dryish soil, here are some ideas for plants that self-seed, spread by runner, or otherwise will happily multiply on their own:

Packera aurea (golden groundsel) spreads like crazy
Eurybia divaricata (white wood aster)
Tiarella cordifolia (foamflower)
Heuchera spp. (alumroot)
Ferns like ostrich fern, sensitive fern, Christmas fern. Ostrich fern in particular multiplies like crazy and is super easy to transplant.
Aquilegia canadensis (columbine)
Carex spp. (sedges -- esp. Pennsylvia)
Polemonium reptans (Jacob's ladder)

This all does not have to break the bank because you do not need to buy giant plants -- you could buy plugs or small plants and just wait for them to spread on their own. My favorite source of native plants in flats of plugs or deep plugs is izelplants.com, which has a great set of filters so you can drill down to plants native to where you live as well as the conditions they like, deer resistance, bird/pollinator attractiveness, etc.

These are super long and I haven't watched them yet but they look really helpful:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I412efrY0Zs

(although your'e dealing with aggressive natives, not non-native invasives :) )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vGtxqY3v_E

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