Lawn care help for heavily wooded property.

Hi,

I just joined and am hoping to get some help getting a decent lawn to grow on our heavily wooded property.

Most of our 1 acre property is wooded with very, very large pines and oaks. I can't seem to get an grass to speak of to grow. Especially the part that is populated with many large oak trees.

Any ideas as to what may help.

 

We have a lot of douglas firs on our property, and the lawn is in three pools of green of various sizes, where the trees are not. They do border them, though, and we have to sweeten the soil every year to counterbalance the acidity of the firs - we use SuperSweet...

I would try getting a soil testing kit and seeing what your soil it like where you want to grow the grass, then you can look into what is needed to correct the ph for it to grow. You might do better to only have the sunniest, least tree-ish part be grass and put a boundary of a hardier groundcover around it for a larger area to be green. There aren't many things that will grow underneath firs, I can say that! I've had some success with acid-loving plants that don't mind some shade, like rhodies, azaleas, andromeda and blueberries.

Ajuga is a decent groundcover that can handle some acidity too (and you don't have to mow it). Where I am we also have Oregon Grape (it's a bit like a holly, rather than a grape) that grows just fine under them but it is larger and spiny to boot.

Good luck!

 

Seems that I have much less problem around the pines. They are extremely tall and there are no limbs except for the very top.

The oaks are the biggest problem. Most of them are in the front of the house and I can't seem to get any grass to grow there. If I could resolve the situation in the front yard I could live with the back.

I live in a community where most of the residents are retired and have all day to work on their yards or have the money to pay someone to do it. If I could just get some green in the front lawn it wouldn't look so bad next to all the other manicured lawns.