looking for new ideas for ground cover

[TLR15]

Here's my situation. I own a 17 acre woodlot that I have built a "camp" on.


I'll be finishing up the "landscaping" in the spring and am looking for ideas for ground cover around the house. The "D" side of the house which is the right side if looking at the front door is where the septic system is and I've decided on patio blocks between the house and the leachfield. My concern is the rear of the house or C side and the B side. Also along the left of the driveway coming up to the house is a roughly 40x80 area. This is shown to the left of the stone wall in the first picture.
The second picture shows some of the rear of the house and the third picture is the B side that transitions to woods. Total footage is about 12000 s/f

This place is a retreat for me and my family and I don't want to be mowing the grass every time I'm there. In a few years my wife and I will be spending much more time up here and possibly fully retire here. I don't want a sterile environment, we're in pretty far and we want a natural feel to the place but the exposed soil is muddy when wet. It packs real hard when dry. Almost a clay mix for only the first foot or so. I don't think much will grow in it but I'm not too sure.

I'm shying away from grass because of the added expense of bringing in loam as well as the work it takes to put a lawn in and maintain it. I have been thinking about wood chips or mulch but then I'm stuck with adding every year to maintain it.

It's gotta be able to stand up to use. The back of the house is where the fire pit is and where we eat when we eat outdoors.

So does anyone have any other ideas?

 

[s219]

Nice looking place!

We finished our house in May, and I trucked in several loads of hardwood mulch and cypress mulch to spread around the house to keep the mud at bay and also to pass final inspection where they check for erosion control. There is only 15-25 feet between the house and woods in most directions except the side with driveway. It is heavily sloped, and I did not want to be mowing that the rest of my life.

The mulch has held up well and is slowly being covered with leaves and will eventually go back to a natural state of leaf litter and leaf mulch like the rest of the woods around us (that is a powerful continuous natural mulching mechanism, as witnessed by the amount of energy people spend raking and fighting leaves in most yards). I don't see the need to add more hardwood mulch in the future except where I landscape for aesthetic reasons. At our last home, the only reason I ever added more mulch was for looks, since the color fades over time. Areas where I left things alone, the original mulch did fine as a starter surface for natural processes to take over.

The only place I planted grass at our new place was over the septic drain field, which is easy to mow. That is a massive reduction in mowing from our old house, where pretty much everything was grass. I will now have less mowing on a 4 acre property than I did on 1/3 acre!

My only real advice would be to make sure you have your landscape sloped and drained away from the house now, before doing anything else. I was lucky because our lot was already sloped. My only real drainage work was to install french-drain style ground gutters below all the drip lines on the uphill side of the house, to make sure that water gets diverted away from the foundation.

 

[dave1949]

Nice camp!

I would do some (more :laughing rock picking and get all the dirt smoothed out first. As s219 says, get your slopes finalized, although it doesn't look bad now over all.

If you get 3-4 large (4'x5') round bales of hay and roll those out like carpet on the ground, you will get a mix of grass and whatever else had gone to seed before it was baled such as red clover. Mulch hay, the stuff that got wet or is too old/moldy to feed, is fine and cheaper. If you can find some hay that was cut late with lots of seed heads, that's even better. You are getting a mixture of seeds and mulch cover all in one.

Red clover makes a pretty good ground cover and it likes to grow here. You may get some volunteer black-eyed susans, hawk weed and daisies. Those are very pretty but you'll never see them if you mow early in the summer.

It will grow on your dirt. If you don't fertilize it, here in Western Maine it isn't going to grow that tall or quickly. If you bush hog it around late July to early August, that should be all you need to do each year.

You do need to keep a patch of mowed grass going on your leach field or it will have brush and trees growing on it eventually.

 

[Baby Grand]

Dave1949s answer is simple, low maintenance, good for the wildlife and well suited to local conditions.
Around here we use white & red clovers, alfalfa, vetch, buckwheat and sometimes just spread a bag of "pasture mix" around.

 

[TLR15]

Nice camp!

I would do some (more :laughing rock picking and get all the dirt smoothed out first. As s219 says, get your slopes finalized, although it doesn't look bad now over all.

Oh definitely. I've got more work to do, I know that! **** rocks keep growing! That B side is not done yet. The old 580 will make quick work of that.
As far as the leach field, not sure if you saw the picture. The grass came up great last fall and I have no problem keeping that mowed.

 

[dave1949]

Oh definitely. I've got more work to do, I know that! **** rocks keep growing! That B side is not done yet. The old 580 will make quick work of that.
As far as the leach field, not sure if you saw the picture. The grass came up great last fall and I have no problem keeping that mowed.

I figured that last pic was your leach field. That looks fine. The roots from the surrounding trees will make their way into the leach field eventually. It seems like tree roots spread farther in openings than in the woods.