It's ok - even if you were to disagree, it's a good discussion. ;o) Yes - how hardy the top is is pretty much irrelevant, but imagine you have a container resting on a garage floor and it's 30* in the garage. You open the door to the outside world which happens to be 0*. All sides of the container and the top are exposed to the extreme cold as ambient temperatures plunge to near 0*. The only source of warmth for the container is what conducts through and radiates from the floor. If you lift the pot and set it in a bench, or set the pot on a piece of foam insulation, you've largely eliminated the extraneous heat source, so the soil temperature will quickly equalize with ambient temperatures. Now imagine the same scenario - a plant directly on the floor, but covered with a cardboard box. The door is opened to 0*, but the box is very effective at trapping heat from the floor. Instead of temperatures equalizing at somewhere near 0*, it's not out of line to think the temperature inside the box will not go below 20*. The finer roots of many plants listed as hardy to zone 6 will not survive actual temperatures of much below 22-25*. Here in MI, even plowed fields with no snow cover rarely see 6" soil temperatures drop as low as 25*. In the case of large containers, however,wouldn't insulating on all sides, bottom and top prevent the migration of any warmth inside the container to the outside, colder environment? No. With an example: Put a covered foam cup of water inside a very efficient cooler and put the cooler in a freezer set at 0*. Within a day (or so) the water is frozen and the temperature of the ice and air surrounding the cup is 0*. The insulation around containers can't contain heat indefinitely, it can only increase the length of time it takes for the temperature to equalize with ambient temperatures. Put a heated curling iron in the cooler and seal it up (trapping extraneous heat) and the cup will not freeze as long as the curling iron is on. People often think that because heat rises, that setting plants in a garage on a table will keep them warmer, but not so. When they raise the plant off the floor (or insulate the bottom) so heat cannot conduct into the soil, the soil equalizes with ambient temperatures because you've eliminated the extraneous heat source. It's not frozen soils or frozen roots that necessarily kill plants, it's root tissues being exposed to killing lows so intra-cellular water freezes, and soils become much colder when lifted above the heat source and exposed on all sides to cold air. Imagine the garage scenario again - doors open and 0* outside. You have a 1" piece of foam insulation that is exactly the size of a box opening. Rate these plantings from what you feel would be the coldest soil temperature to the warmest. Substitute 'foam box' for 'cardboard box' if you wish. The end results will be the same. A) For this planting, you simply set the foam on the floor and set the plant on the foam. B) For this planting, you set the plant on the garage floor & call it good. B) For this planting, you set the foam on the floor and the plant on the foam and cover the plant and foam tightly with a cardboard box. C) For this planting, the plant rests on the floor, the foam is discarded, and the box is placed over the plant. Al

Excellent questions, Pam. Living in eastern Iowa, as I do, the term "former farmland" raises a serious red flag. "Eastern Iowa" raises another because this side of the state generally offers much more diverse conditions than the rest of the state. I would also like "Eastern Iowa" delineated better because some loosely use this term to describe anything east of Des Moines (in the center of the state) and others of us use the term in reference to the tier of counties bordering the Mississippi River. Anything other than those few counties offers quite different growing conditions; which will probably doom the OP's stated choices: "... a number of japanese flowering cherry trees - the okame, yoshino and kwanzan along with some eastern redbuds." Another often overlooked aspect of location in Iowa is whether or not his area was glaciated. There is a tremendous difference in soil conditions and flora due simply to this factor. In many areas, pine trees will not grow due to the unfavorable (to pine trees) soil conditions. The Department of Transportation has been proving this for years, in spite of admonitions from Iowa State University. :-( I believe that most of the already made suggestions are simply ill-guided. Remember that this land was once tall grass prairie. Corn does very well here because it is actually an annual grass plant. Trees are really a quite different story here. Remember that the OP stated it would be 5 to 7 years before they moved on site. This essentially translates to no available source of supplemental water. Unless you are located in a river bottom (where the maples and oaks were found natively growing) the chances are low that any of your tree plantings will ever survive. Red Bud trees are an understory tree that will certainly not live long enough to become established without adequate water and/or protection. It is quite easy for people from other areas of the country with much more rainfall than here to immediately start suggesting trees. They suggest only what they are familiar with. The Iowa Prairie Network has a motto: "Prairies are our Rain Forests". Quite simply, the paradigm is unfamiliar to most -- even many of those living in Iowa who attempt to operate on advice gleaned from magazines. I certainly don't want to come off as some "Native Plant Nazi". I am not. However, it would be unconscionable to sit back and read this "parade of plants" that I know might very well become torched on an open, uninhabited former farmland -- perhaps still saturated with residual atrazine. There are lots of wonderful plants that may do well; dependent upon the conditions of the site. And remember; we are talking about a 20A site. To me, the question is simply: Are you just looking for advice -- or good advice? IronBelly

Sturdy perennials can be bagged with soil. Smaller ones in grocery shopping bags, larger ones in garbage bags. Mulch around the bags. We had a vicious wind storm one autumn which took down many trees. Under the debris I was able to rescue some of my rhododendrons and other shrubs and plants. It took a long time for the tree removal guys to get to us since nothing crashed directly onto our house (thank heavens!), so no time to replant in the yard. They spent the winter bagged, no pots. They came throught the winter just fine. I was shocked. If you have time to dig, pot what you can, bag what you can't, and hope for the best. Better than forfeiting them or giving your beloved plants away. I feel really bad for you. What a disaster! ~Bunnycat

The meadow isn't going to be substantially different from what you currently have. Left totally alone, it will turn back into forest surprisingly fast. Even if you left it for a year, it would fill up with enough woody plants that it would need serious equipment to clear. So it is less a different object, than that your opinion of it changes. Personally, I wouldn't bother trying to preserve the view of the garden by the road. I'd be perfectly willing to deepen or create a shrub border between the road and the lawn, then create a new garden on the other side of that border. That should eat up a fair amount of lawn.