"A personal landscaping question" Topic

Now that it's summer, I wonder what my fellow TMPers own in terms of landscaping? Here are the three classifications:

Lawn – you have well-maintained and manicured landscaping, something that you're proud to show and would do just about anything to keep it up, including secretly breaking watering bans (but hopefully you won't!).

Yard – you don't put very much if any effort to keep it pristine, but you won't let the grass get out of control, either, and brown spots aren't an issue if they pop up.

Lot – your landscaping is non-existent, complete with bald spots and clumps of vegetation.

So, which landscaping scenario do you have?

I have a yard.

I have a lot. 2.57 acres of weeds!!!! My Lady has Lawn.

Where I am this summer the lawn is beautifully manicured. The shrubbery is all nicely done and wonderful to look at.

Since our gardens (front and back) are small, we have no lawn, only a paved terrace in the rear, otherwise raked earth between the plants.

I get a man in to take care of mowing the weeds (what grass, where?)

weeding is as I do it which means most are 2 ft tall.

my back hurts to bad to care…

Somewhere between a lot and a yard. I have put my effort into native drought tolerant and xeriscape landscaping, so that I don't have to constantly mess with it during the summer. That doesn't mean the "lawn" doesn't get out of control after a week of rain or that we don't have bare patches. Some people have a lawn. I have a life.

The only thing I really care about it that we don't have the city on our back about what it looks like.

We have a lawn on our two lots. Th house is on one lot, the adjacent lot has just a single oak.

The wife tends the flower beds. We hire a local kid to mow the grass, trim and edge. We were doing it this way since before I deployed and it freed up a considerable amount of time for yours truly. We justified it since I spent 3 hours commuting daily.

Before there are howls of "sexism" regarding our division of labor, I will explain that I'm in charge of exterior illumination, exterior sound distribution and exterior cooking.

We have a slug infested but otherwise nice, but small garden full of herbs, tomatos, chillis and flowers. Up the hill we have an allotment that looks half abandoned but actually has some good stuff growing. Somewhere.

Lawns? Waste of good potato space…

Currently I have a concrete courtyard I refer to as 'the back yard'. Its starkness is somewhat mitigated by outdoor furniture and a growing number of pot plants and planters. And by the mature trees just over the 7' wall separating me from the park-like grounds of the empty mansion next door. It would make a great Scooby-doo location.

Back 'home' in NZ I have a lawn and a garden that's mostly planted with fruit trees, and a huge grapevine. I call that the back yard too. When it comes time to mow the grass, it is the back lawn.

The front lawn is quite steep as the house is high, so the bits that aren't terraced are whipper-snipped rather than mowed.

… a growing number of pot plants and planters.

I'm guessing you mean potted plants?

I have a garden with a load of grass in it that I cut every now and then. The rear 20 foot is filled with two old cars and assorted 'may come in handy sometime' car bits.

The word 'yard' to describe a garden always sounds odd to me. A 'yard' is surely an enclosed, concreted area, usually associated with light industrial activity. Two nations divided by a common language and all that….

As long as my wife can continue to prod my kids into maintaining it without involving me, I am cool with it..

After that, pavement.

Not counting 8 acres of pasture, I have a small yard with a couple of bushes. We let the horse help keep the grass cut. When the bushes get too unsightly, I run over them with the Bush Hog and let them start over again. But then, you can hardly see my house from the road, so who cares what it looks like?

Of the lot (approximately 2.5 acres) unencumbered with
house and barns (small one and larger one, not for animals
but for storage), about 3/4 of an acre is in grass and
flower beds/flowering trees (Magnolias, Crape Myrtles).
That would be all the 'lawn' we have, and it does require,
when adequately watered, quite a bit of mower time.

There's a big 'natural' area with a couple of enormous
oaks, a huge double elm, and a significant number of
wild blackberry bushes (very thorny !) in which the
rabbit population can take refuge from the foxes and
the coyotes which visit. I suppose this area could be
called 'yard,' but there's little to no upkeep performed
here.

Wild hostas ('volunteers' from a deer-destroyed planting)
surround the natural area, and provide fodder for the
deer which at times graze through the area, gleaning
acorns from the duff.

I have a lawn.

Mike

1/3 acre with a decent part taken up by a pool. There are gardens that my wide takes care of. The lawn is usually in good shape, nothing spectacular but good shape. The gardens are very nice.

Somewhere between lawn and lot. Landscaping is not my strong suit.

somewhere between yard and lawn, probably closer to yard than not..

Yard attempting to be Lawn (@ .4 acre)

Same here, Saber6. I was out there all weekend… NO painting done.

Yard, hire a company to spread weed killer and fertilizer, and cut it when it needs it, but last week was the first time I raked the grass. We are ona well, so the plants get what water nature and our rain barrels supply. We keep the gardens weeded but nothing is immaculate. At a hair over an acre, I am quite content with the level of care it gets, we put much more effort into gardens, but all this is helped by having summers off.

By those descriptors I have a lot.
It's green but I don't have much grass.
I like my moss!
Huge Water Oaks that routinely dump millions of acorns and leaves annually have pretty much prevented grass growing.
All the peripheral vegetation; shrubs close to the house & along fence lines, bonsais, & "pot plants" are well kept though.

The acre or so closest to the house is Yard, part fenced in for the dogs, attempts at planting flowering bushes and trees and turning it into a Lawn…

The 3 or so acres fenced for the horses are cleaned out Lot (no scrub, some trees selectively cut down and stumps dug out, other trees pruned so branches are higher than horse-eye level.

Couple acres by and including the pond are similar to area by house, maybe a little closer to Lawn just because the dogs don't run all over the place tearing up the grass. Still Yard though we have planted a Big Assed Date Palm and several other trees/flower beds. Shore of pond on two sides kind of wild to provide the ducks some cover.

The rest of the land back to the creek is pretty wild with the exception of one acre cleared to work the horses in. Mostly wet land (cypress and pine prevalent, with some live oak and a lot of underbrush).

We have about 11 acres.

We have a patch of land, cleared for fire purposes, with a bunch of trees on it. Four of them we planted a couple months ago, the rest are relatively old oaks.

Green? We don't got no green. The grass goes brown and spikey around May/June, and doesn't green up again until January.

So I suppose you might call it a "lot". The rest of the 100 acres is uncut wild grassland Oak/Pine savannah.

Yard. Biggest one in the 'hood. If it was smaller, I think I would maintain it better.

[… a growing number of pot plants and planters.

I'm guessing you mean potted plants?]

Indeed. You're right. Though the term 'pot plant' is used more often than 'potted plants' where I come from, and has no drug connotations, I would not DARE try to grow the dreaded weed here in Singapore.

Less than one hour away by plane they smoke it openly on the beach and resort staff will deliver it to your room for a small fee.

link

Here, they take a different approach. They hang you.

Lawn. I love the green, not a weed in sight, except in my flower garden…
--
Tim

YouTube link

The lawn is a lot, but the rest of the yard is planters with a variety of drought-resistant plants along with some berry and tomato bushes.

There's one section that is permanently in shadow and we have ferns growing there along with some more ornamental low-water foliage.

Out the back, there's ice plant for ground cover, a Norway spruce that has survived via benign neglect. Further beyond that is a 2.5 acre lake, but I don't have to maintain that.

Wyatt

Lawn, decaying into yard.

When the budget tightened up, the lawn was the first casualty. I weed it and feed it, but its not getting the same level of support it did a few years back.