Land clearing in Brentwood, TN

One house to the acre

Most of Brentwood is zoned residential, at roughly one dwelling per acre. Suburban lots run an acre, R-1 two, and the agricultural residential district three. So the ordinary property is bigger than the yard on it. A mower gets the front and the sides. The back third goes to woods, and then to whatever fills in under the woods. Three usable acres turn into one usable acre and a wall you can’t see through.

Rock at four feet

Town elevation is about 745 feet, on the outer edge of the Central Basin, but that number hides the ground. Bottoms near 650, ridges far higher. The soil is clay weathered off phosphatic limestone, with rock three and a half to five feet down. That grows hickory, hackberry, black walnut and a lot of red cedar, and it doesn’t hold a cleared line long. Cedar is a pioneer. It takes the thin, dry ground first, and locust and blackberry come in behind it.

Two bottoms, two rivers

West Brentwood drains to the Little Harpeth, which rises near Clovercroft and carries on toward Nashville. The east side runs the other way, with Owl Creek heading for Mill Creek and the Cumberland. Either bottom is deep silty alluvium that takes a brief flood now and again in winter or spring and stays soft after. Both grow privet in solid stands that shade out everything under the canopy. Cut privet sprouts back off the stump, so it wants taking to the dirt and a second look later.

Above the eight-fifty line

Hills on the south side push past 900 feet, and everything at 850 and up falls in Brentwood’s Hillside Protection overlay, with three-acre minimum lots and limits on how much you can disturb or cut. Worth a call to Planning and Codes first. From Lebanon it’s about thirty-seven miles west-southwest, out I-40, around Nashville and off I-65 at Concord Road.