Landscaping for dummies

So the yard has sort of been a nightmare. Overgrown, messy, weedy, probably full of ticks or bears or something. Here it is back in February, before we had our new fence.Scraggy. Bleah.We added many bags of fresh mulch and bordered the big sweet gum tree with rocks from all around the yard. Also the hydrangea bloomed and that helped a lot.Added pebbles inside the bordered tree to keep it from looking untidy. I really like that a lot. But the messiest part was actually right outside the fence. The sidewalks were busted up from the sweetgum's fat roots, there wasn't anything growing there and it just generally looked unkempt. So what did we decide to do? Pull it all out! Even though we have no idea what we're doing. I mean, why not, right? My dad decided to pull out some of the offending sidewalk while he was at it. And mom helped too! They love to help. It's what they do when they come to visit. Here it is, post-parental help tornado. The big sweetgum root really seemed like a nice feature to play with. After all, you can't take it out without compromising the stability of the tree, so we decided to copy what some of our neighbors up the street had done with their ginormous roots and just kind of work it in to the landscaping. One side of the yard gets a lot more sun so we decided to plant it with heat loving, drought-resistant stuff.Here's some cute little succulent-type plants we found at a really nice greenhouse in Charlotte, NC.I'm especially fond of the hens-and-chicks. Sempervivum! I hope they propagate.The other side is shady and has that big root, so it looks more like a woodland garden. Phil wants it to look jurassic--he found this neat mossy ground cover that will hopefully spread out...if we didn't already accidentally kill it with the heat the week before we had a chance to plant it :( I think it's looking pretty cool though! There's a small hosta and a fern and then this burning hearts that I planted right in the root nook. Again with some small pebbles throughout to try to tie it back to the sweetgum in the yard. And neighbor Amy gave us some creeping jenny that will hopefully take root as well. The little rock wall is mostly scavenged from neighbors yards (with permission!) but I think we need to build it higher so we're gonna need to get some more flat rocks. My young neighbor Ava informed me that as it stands right now any dog could just walk right into it. Then Billie Jean proved her point and walked right into it. So yes, it needs to be a bit higher.Pretty cute for now though! Definitely a lot better looking than it was. We'll come back to it in a few weeks when everything's had a chance to settle and see how it's looking.