We have a large "debris wall," made up of stumps, tree trunks, and other leftovers from when our lot was cleared, to one side of our driveway. We considered having it removed, but it provides a privacy barrier between us and our neighbor. If we removed it, that would leave a wide open area.
You can see, in the photo, part of the edge of the driveway in the lower left and again in the upper left, as it goes over a rise going to the house. There isn't much room between the debris wall and the driveway. You can also see part of the house. We worked hard on the house design and on the yard near the house to create the feeling, when you drive up, that you're entering a story book setting.
It would be nice to find a way to hide, dress up, camouflage, or otherwise make this easier on the eyes. We considered ivy, but that can spread and get out of control easily (on both our side and our neighbor's side). If we plant trees or bushes, they'd have to go at least 20' high and block the view during the winter as well as the summer.
Last summer a lot of pokeweed grew up on part of the wall and, while it's a weed, it's not ugly and helps hide the debris. But during the winter, when it dies out, while it's still easier to look at than the debris, it doesn't seem to want to grow on the end you can see in the photo.
We'd like to hide it but make it look natural or at least interesting and not out of place with the mood we're creating for the house and yard. I wouldn't be opposed to building something, but that would be expensive and a lot of work if I just built some kind of wall along the 70' or so of this mess.
Edit: This debris wall is at least 15' tall, maybe 20' in some places, from 50-70' long and maybe 30' or more wide. It's also not fully stable. While everything seems to have settled, there is no way I'd climb on it to reach the top or so I can spread or shovel anything on it.
Best Answer
Plant desirable native shrubs and vines that would grow over the irregular surface and transform it into an aesthetically pleasing feature. You might have to add soil to fill voids, and you could mix leaves into this soil for fill.
You could put up a barn owl box to entice one or a pair to live there and provide natural rat control. If you don't have barn owls where you are, then you probably have screech owls. We have had boxes for screech owls in our back yard for almost 40 years and they do some rat control, but not like a barn owl or barred owl would.
Have you had any suggestions that in the current condition your yard is not in compliance with residential code? We have a natural yard in a sea of manicured lots and we have gotten three citations for code violations over the past 10 years. The underlying criticism is that our lot (10,000 sq ft) is not neat and so surely must be in violation.
The code inspectors have so far ruled that our yard is in basic compliance under the xeriscape allowances in the city code, but they always find one or two technical violations or common violations that are mostly overlooked. Last time the only thing we had to do was trim trees in front to be above 14 ft from the street surface.