Front yard dilemma-part 1

So here is one of the many challenges i face in my garden- The front yard

This is how the place looked when we bought the house in April of 2008. The house faces East on a busy road. The lovely shade is from 4 huge "live oaks" that looked like they were never pruned for ages. There were a lot of branches that were reeling under the excess weight.
















Right underneath the oaks were some very leggy shrubs and some very leggy jasmine that did not get any sunlight.

In the last year or so we have been busy working on fixing up the inside of the house and never got around to planting or doing anything.

One thing i figured out early on was that the grass had to go....period ! I had turned off the entire sprinkler system in the house. The pipes in the back were broken when the pool and all the asphalt and concrete was removed. The front yard does not have anything nice that i want to keep. I also added a good few inches of fresh wood-chips that came from the pruning of our oaks to get rid of the grass. Late this summer when i moved the wood-chips i was glad to see all the grass gone. There are a few that are sprouting back after the rains in the past few weeks.

Here is how the front yard looks after the oaks have been pruned.


One of my biggest challenges in the front yard is the lack of privacy and my options to plant under the oak that might give me some much needed privacy on a busy road.

Any suggestions fellow bloggers...