Suburban gardening

Last August, my husband and I purchased a suburban home in Folsom, California. We loved the house, and even liked the landscape, but after we moved in we began to notice that the previous owners had a different sense of gardening than we do. I'll call it the homeowner -"You can do it, we can help" gardening job and lack of experience. I guess everyone has to start somewhere.

My pet peeves about our yard include:

Allowing suckers on tree roots go unpruned, and thus be allowed to turn into a tree/bush/shrub with multiple leaders. We have a japanese maple in the backyard that is purple and green in the spring and summer. Grafted rootstock was allowed to sprout.

Perfect symmetry in the backyard (gag me), complete with concrete slab poured 180-degrees around the house, and cute little concrete lawn striping. And it's not even permeable.

Choice of invasive non-native plants (ie. mexican heather)

SO MUCH LAWN. Thankfully our water isn't metered at this point, but I plan on overhauling the landscape before we get to that day. If I'm going to pay for water by the cubic foot, it better be watering brautiful native gardens that promote biodiversity and animal life.

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So here is a picture of our front yard, in all its suburban glory.

The picture doesn't even do the amount of lawn we have justice. Just to give you an idea, on the side yard strip of land, it is 12' from the fence to the sidewalk (I measured), and at least 50-60 feet long. That's just the sideyard.

So I've decided that we're going to sheet mulch the grass along the side. Sheet mulching is when you put a layer of paper or some other environmentally responsible degradable material onto freshly manured grass, and put a 4-6" layer of natural material (mulch, leaves, etc) over it to begin the breaking down process. In doing research for this undertaking, I found a woman who did it in Canada. (Here too.) She started in October, so I may be a little late for this year, but I find myself daydreaming on a daily basis about what it's going to look like when it's done. California native plants and rock outcroppings. That will get me through the winter! Perhaps I'll start a trend in my neighborhood in the long run. Wouldn't that be great!