A neighbor told me: Your yard marches to the beat of a bohemian drummer.
If it could talk, it would probably tell you I'm a tree-aholic. When I moved here in Nov 2007 as a renter, I had 4 trees in the front yard, and one of those was dead from our historic drought. The other 3 were on corners and provided no shade. The rest of the 50x150ft front yard was a combination of zoysia grass and weeds. It's a corner lot with a SW exposure -- LOTS of afternoon sun.
I work from home, and use a front-facing bedroom as my office. The original owners had giant roll-up blinds on the front porch to block the afternoon sun. I didn't like blocking my view of the yard and the street, so I only used the blinds the first year. Basically, I didn't see my yard from June to September.
I was on a rent-to-own plan, and bought the house in Feb 2009. By the end of March I had planted 10 trees, and 8 of those were in the front yard. I've since added another 10, and replaced two that drowned. Another of the original front yard trees died last year - blue spruces were not meant to live in sunny GA front yards. That means I get to plant at least one more tree out front. (have I mentioned I'm a tree-aholic?)
I've also put a flower bed around the flag pole - it grows rocks, salvia, weeds, and fire-ants.
Looks great when it's only rocks and salvia, as it was intended to be.
And I dug up an oval in the center of the front yard, forget the exact dimensions but it was a pain-in-the-back to create. It has some native shrubs, some butterfly bushes, a redbud, and assorted perennials (along with the requisite fire-ants and weeds).
I've used wood chips (see the Aug 17 tip of the day) to mark out the beds between the bajillioin trees -- ultimate plan is a wildlife friendly yard with safe corridors of travel for the critters. My goal on moving in was that within five years of being here, I could sell my riding mower. With the trees and beds marked out, it's easier now to mow with a self-propelled walking mower, so I sold the rider this past spring, just in time for my second-hand walking mower to refuse to work.
My neighbor who loves to mow is mowing for me now, with his zero-turn riding mower.
As the trees move closer to their intended sizes and shadiness, I'll start filling in the beds between them with shrubs.
Here's how it looked from the neighbor's porch in May 2010, before I started building the beds between the trees...
(click picture to embiggen it)
You can see the entire progress on my blog:
http://fiwit.blogs.com/fiwit/g...
