Hello Virginia gardeners- I need suggestions from people who understand our hot summers and clay soil. Sorry for the long post.

Situation: We just had two huge rotting silver maples taken down and the stumps ground in our side yard. This has left us with a 35x20 foot island of wood chips mixed with dirt, about 2 feet high, in our side yard, close to the street and totally visible. It's an eyesore.

To add to the story the yard is solid Virginia clay and our neighbor's driveway is angled so all the rain runs off his roof, onto his driveway and into our side yard, causing standing water along the edge whenever it rains hard.

In the fall, we plan to have it landscaped with Eastern red cedar, bald cypress, yaupon holly, winterberry holly and maybe river birches and possibly install drainage. For now, I want to grow something on top of it for the summer to make it look less like some sort of ancient burial mound.

My husband and I have been reading about how ground stumps take up all the nitrogen and you need to remove all the chips. We already spent so much on tree removal and stump grinding, that we would rather not pay someone to remove them.

I also had an experience about 15 years ago when a storm toppled a massive eastern red cedar in another part of our yard. We had that stump ground. I had just started to learn about gardening and read a lot about hugelkultur. In my newbie innocence, I figured why not mix the ground wood with my clay soil and see what happened. I mixed it where it was and create a big flower bed, raising the level about 10 inches above the lawn, which also has standing water in the spring (we live on top of underground streams and drainage is an issue) and carted more of it to mix in with my clay soil and some bags of compost and garden soil to make raised vegetable beds. All of those have been really productive even the first year. The only fertilizer I add is ground leaves every fall, compost and manure every February, and fish emulsion in the summer. The flower bed sank about 5 inches over a few years but is still draining well and free of standing water. Could the conventional wisdom of a ground stump taking all the nitrogen be amended (haha- pun intended) if you are talking about solid clay?

Here are my ideas for this summer:

1, Take advantage of the new-found sun and place a row of big planters along the mound and plant tomatoes in them with butternut squash along the edges that could then sprawl all over the mound to cover it. I would get some cute obelisks for the tomatoes for a sort of parterre effect since it's in the visible side yard.

2.Direct seed it with zinnias or some other easy annual all over to create a flower meadow. I have tons of saved marigold seeds I could use too. Not sure if they would grow in it but seeds are cheap or free if I use the marigold seeds.

My husband wants to hire someone to sod it. I think this is a waste of money for the summer since we plan to have it landscaped with trees in the fall. I would rather save the money for that. He thinks we can remove the chips ourselves. I do most of the gardening and yard work because he has back problems and I know how hard this is going to be. It is such a big, big pile. It would also be ugly as mulch elsewhere in the yard.

I also really think that maybe incorporating the chips and letting them rot in place would help the clay soil and our drainage problems. Am I wrong? It might help to know that both trees had a fungus and were rotted from the inside. One of the stumps was really rotted. The other was not rotted and there are still some big roots in the ground. I could keep spraying it with fish emulsion all summer to add nitrogen. I also plan to get a soil test before we add any trees in the fall.

I guess I have a two-pronged question. 1. Cheap ideas to make it look less hideous for the summer and 2. whether leaving the chips might actually improve the drainage and tilth of our solid clay.

Thanks everyone!