Il a d'abord fallu que je tonde la pelouse qui avait atteint des hauteurs inégalées

Question

Why was it necessary to use the 'passe compose' of falloir here?

Referring to: j'ai semé de nouvelles graines que j'ai recouvertes de compost

Someone once shared a list of French verbs (probably from the lawless French) which take the preposition 'de' to denote "to do something with/by another thing", where intuitively one would want to use 'avec'. For example: 'La ville est entourée de collines.' Here, the natural translation is 'The city is surrounded by hills. Along the same line: 'Le jardin est recouvert de neige.' --> The garden is covered with snow!

Can anyone please share that list here also?

Cécile Janty-Davies · Accepted Answer

Bonjour Blaise, 
1. This is a story in the past so the verbs describing what you did have to be in past tenses, and you will have a mixture of passé composé and imparfait.
In the sentence,
 First, I had to mow the lawn 
I had to
 can be -
Il a fallu que ... (using falloir + subjunctive)
or 
J'ai dû ...
which uses devoir + infinitive 
and is used a bit further in the text.
2. I don't know of such a list. I did work on some lists of active voice verbs, which are followed by 'de', but the examples you quote are passive voice verbs -

être entouré de = to be surrounded by
être recouvert de = to be covered by

Here are some other examples -

être accompagné de (to be accompanied by)
être suivi de (to be followed by)
être entouré de (to be surrounded by)
être couvert de (to be covered with/by)
être rempli de (to be filled with)
être orné de (to be adorned with)
être aimé de (to be loved by)
être détesté de (to be hated by)
être admiré de (to be admired by)
être respecté de (to be respected by)
être craint de (to be feared by) 
être estimé de (to be esteemed by)

which you might find useful.