This is a prize-winning yard

Actually, I'm told this WAS a prize-winning yard, that the previous residents had this bed full of flowers and landscaping around the tree, and that they won the yard of the month, possibly more than once. So what happened to it? Again, my neighbor told me that after Mrs. Green Thumb moved out, someone, (assuming housing maintenance) came and ripped out all the plants.

Now it's a big empty space, but I assumed I could plant something and make it look better than it does now. So I bought a few bulbs and a shovel. Yes, we had to buy a shovel because for some reason, or lack of reason in the chaos of moving we didn't bring any gardening tools with us, no hoses, sprinklers, or pots. So what did my first shovel-full of Japanese earth reveal? Sand. A four or five inch layer of coarse sand on top of some pretty decent looking garden soil. I'm at a loss about what to do now. BTW, every other house on our street has grass or landscaping in front. So I wondered if it's all sand everywhere. I checked our backyard (where I'm hoping to start a small garden) and the side. Findings: no sand, just dirt. Hmm.

The housing office agreed to send the inspector to take a look at it. (On a side note, the housing inspector is a very nice Japanese man, polite and helpful, though he has been to our house way too many times already.)

He was just here, and guess what? It's not sand. That's what he told me. It's [something in Japanese, I don't remember exactly] "Soil. what you plant will grow very well."

Huh?

He offered to sod it for us. When they have money in the budget, of course, which is not right now.

Then he pointed to the the grass around the tree and said, "like that. that is sand". (Yes, he said it was sand, though he had said it wasn't sand, but I was befuddled and didn't question him.)

If you look carefully at the picture above, you can see that the grass around the tree looks severely distressed, though everywhere else is green. (perhaps if we had a sprinkler, but never mind)

I said "it doesn't look like it's doing so well, does it?"

He laughed.

I wasn't trying to be funny. I'm still confused.