7200 sqft lot here with a ton of prior vegetation and landscaping by previous owners, all done very well. Back yard, as viewed from the house, faces northeast, front yard faces southwest. I have a spacious hillside in which I could grow huge amounts of stuff but it is already covered in plants, some of which I’ve added (natives), and a few which I’ve removed from a lower bed. Even though I could go crazy on the hill part adding all manner of stuff, it’s actually important that the existing vegetation stay as it helps secure the slope against erosion and since we’re in a valley I’m basically at the base of it, starting from my backyard heading upwards so erosion and drainage are always a background concern. I’ve since mulched the entire hillside, added erosion mat on the steepest part, and added various native grasses on ledges and the such. I plan to add even more natives to the steepest part of the hillside to help root the soil but I’m leaving the bottom of the slope as a potential open-ended option, although it tends to only get mid-day → evening light due to the fence right against it.
The lot is a classic ranch house layout: wide. The only problem light wise is a massive monterrey cypress in my neighbors yard which cuts off sun in the morning by about 2 hours becoming progressively worse towards the summer equinox until the sun wraps around and clears the tree, plus the sides of other slopes which also generally occlude morning light (no fixing that).
When we moved in the house already had fruit trees, 3 meyer lemons, an apple tree of unknown origin, multiple cherry plum trees, and 3 blueberry bushes. Since then I’ve colonized the upper patio area into basically “berry grove” with a ton of containerized blueberries (southern, northern, and rabbiteyes - many of them just younger plants), some raspberries, various rubus hybrids, and other species I’ve been collecting along the way which I intend to plant in the ground in a lower bed. There “used” to be a privacy hedge of 6 Japanese privet shrubs flanking an apple tree - of which the shrubs still exist but I’ve heavily thinned them out and took 2 of them down to stumps as it was simply an excessive amount of trees/foilage to have in that spot. It’s allowed a lot more light filtering into the bed in which they’re planted from which I’ll add some native huckleberries and ferns.
I plan to turn this unshaded lower bed area into a spot for my rabbiteyes and highbush plants but the two existing bush daisies need to be removed first. I’ll likely keep the rosemary and definitely keep the large ceanothus behind it. The area with brush debris in front of the retaining wall I intend to trellis logan, boysen, and/or olallie, and both fence lines in the back of the patio will also get cane berries of some sort.
Here’s some drone shots from before we bought the place:
I basically spend the vast majority of my off-time in the backyard. Either screwing around with small fruit plants, planting/propagating natives, or hanging out with wife and dog. Plus taking care of the house, dealing with gophers, squirrels, birds, snakes, pests, irrigation, etc. Luckily the deer can’t get in, but they do eat my neighbor’s pears. It’s a very comfortable place to be though.
I also recently signed up for a subscription to shadowmap.org (it’s like 10 bucks a month) just to be able to accurately plot sun and shadow coverage for any time or day of the year. It’s actually pretty cool because I basically just added a bunch of their canned 3d trees and a few rectangles for the fences from their editor and was able to mostly mimic how reality looks including the exact time that patio and bed gets light in the summer vs late winter/spring:
The things we do for our plants…
