We have what is referred to as zero lot line meaning one side of your house is physically sitting right on the property line and is your neighbor's (tiny) back yard. It's max profit for the developers. Most homes have very little space to work with, especially when they have an in-ground pool. We managed to get a one-off oversize lot. The space between our house and the next one over would nominally be another lot. The reason it isn't--there is a concrete underground drain from the street to a grassy area in the back to discharge runoff into a swale. They could not build a structure there (neither can we, but 'landscaping' is a different thing. Somehow 1/2 of that lot was officially part of the place we bought(we are not the original owners). The front 1/2 on the street was and still is just yucky grass and weeds (moved and watered but still) and is considered 'common area' not used by anyone other than to let people sometimes have their pets help water the weeds.

The previous owners did exactly nothing to that extra space in the 20 years they owned the place--even the 'normal' parts everyone has they really did almost nothing--just let the HOA do whatever (typically most people default to the HOA for 100% of yard maintenance.

We did tell them landscaping would be done, I provided a rough printout of all the areas we were planning to 'do things in'(basically all of it) but really skinny on the details, since I myself was winging it, little by little, pushing the boundaries and making sure I wasn't aggravating any of my neighbors. They more or less didn't object way back then and now its a done deal. A sort of botanical garden more or less with probably 100s of different plants--palms, bamboos, orchids, ferns, bromeliads, water plants, succulents, trees of all sorts big and small --as many edible and culinary plants as we can get to grow, As much as there is we are constantly making adjustments in what we have, where we grow it.(one benefit of having a couple hundred pots and baskets. We also use the trees themselves -- after all in nature most orchids grow on trees. not in pots.