The Driveway
The Hedges
The West Front Yard
The West Yard
The East Yard
The Sidewalk and Easements
The front yard's St. Augustine grass continues seamlessly into the property of my neighbors on both sides.
The most obvious and dominant feature of the front yard is the southern live oak, which shades most of the area most of the time. Even with the shade, the grass and other groundcover plants stay healthy and grows quickly in the warmer months of the year. Other groundcover forbs I have found in the front yard include lawnflower, oriental false hawksbeard, flat-top mille graines, Virginia buttonweed, henbit, dichondra, bermudagrass, dallisgrass, bur clover, Carolina geranium, and yellow woodsorrel.
At the beginning of 2016, I had the tree trimmed, the exposed roots ground down to the ground level, and a root barrier put in. To put in the root barrier, the workers dug a two feet deep trench around the outside of the space bounded by the hedges, the driveway, the front sidewalk, and the property of my eastern neighbor. By March 2017, most of the groundcover has grown back, but the area around the trunk of the tree has bare spots.
Sticks fall from the oak throughout the year. In the winter of 2016/2017, I let them stay where they fell, thinking they would be good for the soil as long as the mower could break them down. I ended up tossing the larger ones over the fence into the back yard nook, as I had done in the past, but mowed the smaller ones.
