Jill Doughtie

North side of the front yard (View larger)

Here’s what the north half of the front yard looks like right now. The yard slopes down toward the sidewalk, I used the ground up palm tree root and soil to make berms to try to stop runnoff water. One runs along the sidewalk, and another one is about five feet up from the sidewalk. Then I mulched over the berms and the bare dirt — and about ten square feet of grass that I thought I’d just try covering instead of digging out.

South side of the front yard (View larger)

On the south side of the yard, I stopped pulling up grass entirely and just mulched right over it. When I did that in the back yard with a thick carpet of pine needles, most of the grass died. This is pear tree mulch — I don’t know if the pine needles were a special part of killing the grass so easily last time, or whether any mulch will do. I want to avoid buying and using plastic, and I don’t have lots of newspaper or cardboard handy to layer below the mulch, so I’m giving plain mulch a go.

These are the berms I made out of palm tree root and soil. They’re about half mulched over — mulching is on hold right now because of the brush fire up in La Canada and all of the smoke in the air.