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There are more and larger photos at the included link, bottom of page 3 and all of page 4.

Moon

Here is a link that might be useful: House and lot photos

You know what's funny, Moon? I've been lurking here for a long time too, with the opposite problem. I've got a 45 year cookie cutter Ranch style tract house. There are front yard trees (Modesto Ash & Fruitless Mulberry -- yuck!), that are poorly sited or unhealthy but they provide needed shade -- do I landscape around them, or cut them down and start over with tiny new trees since eventually they'll need to be removed anyway? There are shrubs that I wouldn't have chosen and don't fit into my ideas for my yard - but it feels so wrong to pull out a well established huge camellia -- other people would LOVE to have this plant. I have a cracking patio that is oddly positioned nearly a poorly designed room additon that previous owners did... do I need to totally remove the concrete with a sledgehammer to lay a new patio? Should I put a deck over the existing patio because it seems easier even though that wouldn't be my first choice ? I've often thought that I'd be more able to think clearly about what I want to do if had a blank slate instead of these large obstacles in the way!

I envy you not having to start your work weilding a chainsaw or sledgehammer. The grass is always greener...

-Kristy

Well, paper is cheap, that's where I would start. I would measure everything and draw a "map" of my lot. Then I would get some vellum to overlay the scale drawing and start dreaming. I would also enlarge the photos, put the vellum on top and sketch in some ideas. Make a list of my "needs" and "wants". How's my soil? Where is the sun, where are the shadows? How much does it change from one season to the next? How much lawn do I need/want to keep? Does the more natural area lie at a distance from the house or nearer? Front, side or back? What will attract wildlife? If I enclose the back with a fence here, do I like that or does it make the area too small? I have a lovely house and a lovely door, but not much of a front porch, do I need more? If I were to make a walk to the front sidewalk, what material would I like?

A vision that immediately jumps into my mind is a more stubstantial stone porch, a stone walk extending out to the sidewalk, a low stone wall enclosing the front about halfway to the sidewalk. Two or three steps down in the walk where it meets the low wall, perhaps some lanterns flanking the walk at that point. A tall airy tree on the left, a smaller flowering tree to the right, and green understory inside the wall, a sward of lawn outside. Keep it simple, save the puttering for the back. Or you could reverse that, put the lawn inside the low wall, and the trees and evergreen understory outside the wall.

It's wonderful that your lot isn't completely flat; use the changing elevations to your advantage.

That's my uninformed vision suggested by your beautiful setting; what is yours? Sketch, sketch, sketch!

Moon, I've also read literally dozens of landscaping books, and still couldn't landscape my way out of a paperbag until I started studying design in a classroom setting. Some will say I still can't, but there it is. So it's not you. The way design principles are presented in gardening and design books makes sense only when you understand the principles by actually practicing using them. At least that's how it was for me.

A scale drawing of your property showing the location of the house is a good place to start. Once you have that, you can use tracing paper to play with ideas.

Start by listing what you do want and prioritizing the list. I can't tell from the photos if that's a little patio in the fenced off area behind the house or not. If you need a small patio for yourself and a couple of friends, you may want to start there. You can start by sketching in possible plantings around the patio to give it a little privacy. You don't have to block out the neighbors completely if you don't want or need to, but even a low planting will give you a feeling of comfort, and visually reduce the size of that space to a more human scale. You can then think about what you want to look at when you are on the patio, and sketch in ideas for beds that will not only give you a view, but a place to putter as well.

Maybe a patio is not your first priority. It may be that you want to landscape the front to make the house seem more like it's "in" the landscape than sitting "on" it, all alone, as it is now. Think about adding some ornamental trees that frame the view of the front of the house. Pencil them in and go outside with your drawing, and imagine how they will look when they mature a bit. Do the same from inside the house, in the rooms where you will spend enough time that the view might be important. You may find that your placement blocks a view you want to keep, or will block the sun too much. Adjust if necessary.

If you already know you want a fence, sketch it in, and play with plantings that conceal parts of it to make it less conspicuous.

If you need shade, that's also a good place to start. Research trees that will flourish in your conditions, see what the local nurseries have available, and plan where to put them for the most benefit. The afternoon sun in the west tends to be hot, so trees placed to throw some shade on the windows or sitting area can be selected. They don't have to be huge trees to give shade as the sun gets lower in the afternoon, and the southwest and west sides might need it the most, but experiment with where shadows fall and pencil in some trees.

Do you need a veggie plot? Compost pile? Shed? If so, figure out where they will be convenient to use. Veggie gardens need water, compost pile may need screening. I wouldn't worry about microclimates yet. As you plant things and put in fence, etc. they will change anyway, as sun and shade patterns and wind will be affected by anything you add. For the moment, select plants that are at least hardy in your zone, or go one zone colder to be safe in an unusually severe winter. You can experiment later with fussier plants.

Hardscape is expensive. Fortunately, if there isn't a good reason to have a walk or other feature included, you can skip it. If you know you'll need a walk to make access from front to backyard more convenient in wet or winter weather, include one, just don't put it so close to the house that you end up with the dreaded 3' bed. Leave 5 or 6 feet for shrubs or groundcover, or a flowerbed if the location calls for one. I wouldn't put in a walk and focal point just for the heck of it. If you find that once you get started a walk seems like it makes sense from point A to point B, add it then. You can always wait to see where you wear a path in the lawn.

All of this can take a lot of time and thought. If you're patient, you can start small with whatever ends up at the top of your priority list. If you're impatient, you can always hire a designer to do a full plan or give you some direction.

Moon child. You are going to have fun! I gather from your photo album that this will be a fun process for you and your family...an adventure to create a home that you live in and love and where you belong; a place to put down roots. So, to begin!

One thing is clear from the dancing gypsy and your screen name; you will put some exotic, quirky, individual style on this blank slate.

What do you want to see when you look out your kitchen window? What do you want to smell on a warm summer night, with the windows open as you drift off to sleep? What would you like to greet you as you return home after a long day of "being in the world"?

Also, think of your yard in sections? Front yard, side yard, childrens play area, dogs area, veggie garden, place to grill, and so forth.

So, your thinking might go like this: In my front yard, to welcome me home from a long day I would love to see a riot of color, or the soothing green of junipers, or to see my house wrapped in lush green.

You get the idea.
Patty

Gee, and I thought the name Moon Child might have to do with feeling like you're living on the moon... although like Lunita my experience leaves me not so convinced that that's a bad thing.

After hanging around this forum for a year or so, I've concluded that when it comes to residential design, homeowners have a distinct advantage over professionals. A professional has to come in to this situation and visualize it all, from A-Z. This kind of mental modelling is exhausting work, although one gets better at it with practice, and there are people who are very good at it both naturally and due to long years of visualizing and then actualizing.

Homeowners don't have the opportunity to get good at the visualizing process (unless you move as often as SayPoint!) but we also don't have to visualize it all at once. When we aren't sure what we want, we can start with one or two elements that we KNOW are going to be there, and then visualize the next step AFTER we can actually see the first in place with our eyes.

So you can go through the prioritizing process described by SayPoint, but when you get far enough down the list that you can't decide which tree you're going to put where, or how the bed around the patio will be shaped, you can defer that decision until you are actually sitting on the patio.

If you consciously examine your experiences in the house so far, you will likely find some things that you KNOW you are going to want. You probably know, for example, whether you want to preserve that view all the way down the street or whether you perceive that as an incursion into your privacy and need to get a tree started.

You probably also know enough already to install your fence. You may have to massage out questions about whether you want an apron outside it, whether it will follow the contours of the land or be levelled with a footing (and if so whether the footing will be concrete or rock), and what height you want. But even if you don't, here's some news: fences can be temporary! Again, that's a luxury that only a homeowner has. If you don't put the fenceposts in concrete yet, you can even move fence posts if your preferences change in the future! (Unless, of course, you're doing brick pillars...).

The other thing I think I would want to do in such a place is to have a transitional strategy as plants grow in. For example, you will have a canopy of shade trees, eventually. But to begin with, perhaps a pergola and vines, planted to cast shade where the trees will cast it in ten years, which is probably a reasonable lifespan for such a structure anyway.

-lunita (kristy) wrote-
"I envy you not having to start your work weilding a chainsaw or sledgehammer. The grass is always greener... "

Did that already: Two forty foot tall multi-trunk evergreens held upright with plastic-coated wire clothesline around the various trunks--each tree at the corner of the house, planted the typical two foot distance from the foundation; two 5-6 foot burning bushes planted directly in front of the windows that you couldn't see out of 'cuz of the bushes; two gorgeouse limestone retaining walls which fell over during a heavy rainstorm--seems there was no drainage and no loose fill behind them.

It was hard work, but the walls were re-built and look GORGEOUS (I miss them), the evergreens were removed, the burning bushes were transplanted. We added curved beds, hostas, weigelia, rose of sharon, dwarf arborvitae, potentilla, stepandracha (sp?), and it began to look more....something....I don't know what. Definitely more lovely, something I enjoyed coming home to.

I tell you what...you design my space and I'll design yours :o).

Moon