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Landscaping ideas for destroyed yard

crazyfingers said:
So ya it sucks. At my parents house. The new septic leaching field is a large hill about 2 and a 3/4 feet above the previous grade. Gone are the grape vines. Gone is the raspberry patch. Gone are the 6 blueberry bushes. And gone is one peach tree.

Newly arrived is a hill that takes up most of the back of the field.

I'm trying to brainstorm what to do. I will really miss the old plants and I will hate the hill, even when it's seeded, but there must be something that I can do. Have some trees planted? A rock garden?

The hill won't be seeded until Mid-September and probably no grass until October but I an thinking about how to make this feel good.

Here are some before and now photos.

Looking towards the back

View attachment 51736View attachment 51737

Looking at the house

View attachment 51738View attachment 51739

From in back of the shed
View attachment 51740View attachment 51741

The plans
View attachment 51742

I won't be deciding anything for a year. Grass needs to grow.

I don't need to go cheap. But I want very low maintenance. My initial thinking is to get four or five 6 foot white pines to line the south and west side along the slope. I love white pine. And they will live for centuries. But I'm open to lots of ideas. Rhododendrons along the whole slope? I mainly would like to reduce the obviousness of the freaking hill. The pipes of the leeching field are less that a foot below the new grade on top of the hill so I can't really plant anything big on top. No white pines on top. But Rhododendrons would be OK on top. And I want to keep mowing easy. Or is there some kind of garden I could put on the top?

Love to hear any ideas.
Click to expand...
Try White Clover. It only grows to four or six inches (OK - 10 - 15 cm in Canada - it's our lovely climate) nice and dense in the second year to choke out random "weeds" from getting in. Bees and other insects love it and you really don't have to mow because it only gets so tall. I'm trying to replace my grass with it, bit by bit yearly. It also enriches the soil with nitrogen fixing bacteria on its roots. If you want a hedge, try Eastern White 'Cedar'. It fills in beautifully and can be trimmed like topiary. Here's a little known fact: There is no Cedar native to North America. What we canoe builders call White Cedar is actually: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuja_occidentalis , a variety of cypress. True Cedar is an Old World plant, think "Cedars of Lebanon".
 
I feel for you. Last month I paid almost 10k to clean up the bottom land on our property. I was excited, but it broke my heart; the ground after cleanup looked just like that. It used to be lush:
IMG_7492.jpeg
Worst of all, it has been a drought with zero precipitation until last week or so which gave us some drizzle. Amazingly, what looked exactly like your dirt patch a few weeks ago, now looks like this:
IMG_3583.jpeg
Not a lot of cover, the elk herd was disappointed, but I’m encouraged by the recovery. It’s going to be awesome, and SO IS YOUR YARD!
 
While it would have been nice if the house had not needed a new septic system, i do love how the wildflower hill is turning out. It,s fun to see what grows. It looks nice. Lots less mowing.

The nicest thing about this yard is that i can walk most of the way around the yard in the shade.

I do need to get some grass seed for grass that does well in full shade. The section that goes around the hill on the far side is in perpetual shade in summer and has kinda died.
 
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