Land is stabilized by laying an elongate generally flat mat onto the ground where the mat is formed from strips of material arranged side by side and connected at spaced positions longitudinally to define a honeycomb structure with top and bottom surfaces of the mat defined by edges of the strips. The mat is unrolled from a supply and laid onto the ground so that open empty tubular cells stand upwardly from the surface to be partly filled with top soil. The mat is shaped into the required rectangular strips to lie side by side in butting arrangement by locating pins in the ground. Seed attached to the mat grow in the soil and ground to effect stabilization.