Original Shape of Backyard before bush hogging and grubbing

After Clearing

View of hill looking out from porch

You didn't say which direction the hill was. If your front yard is on the south and the back to the north, then you have a lot of shade. If that bare area is on the east, you have morning sun. If on the west, you have the HOT afternoon sun.

Those Leyland cypresses are PRIVACY and I think you'll regret removing them. I have seen them topped off (often under utility poles) so that they have a nice even shape...but that must be kept up. It looks great, though, when they are topped off.

zgordon,

If you have some money to invest, you might want to have a landscaper give you a quote on filling some of that hill in for you, and using a retaining wall to make a nice lawn closer to the back of the house.

If you ever go to sell it, that would be a nice selling feature for your home, someone with kids would love that.

If you don't have the money, I would plant ornamental grasses as soon as you can this spring.

Any kind of ornamental grass will do, you could plant dwarfs, and lirope will really help with the erosion that you are eventually going to see.

You want clumping lirope.

Congrats on your new home, and don't cut those trees down, they are holding

a lot of soil in your yard right now. You cut them down, there is literally nothing to hold

the soil from moving during a bad rain storm. That hill is steep. And we both know what the rain storms are like in the south.