Ms Lu, Forget about all the dos and don'ts for a moment. I'll tell you what I do (and I'm not necessarily normal in my approaches) with every landscape design on an existing home. It evolved from being a necessary step for drawing a plan and became (to me) the most essential step in planning a landscape. It is to clear my head of any detail of what I might do and simply go out to the home and start to do an existing conditions plan. I know that you live there and believe you already know those existing conditions, but there are different levels of familiarity. A humorous analogy would be going to first base, second base, . of intimacy with the property. We all know that the more we do anything, the more we understand it and pick up on detail and remember it (whatever "it" is). This is no different with your landscape. The four bases of an existing conditions plan are measuring and photographing, recording your measurements in a sketch or diagram as you measure, and drafting the plan which is a two step process of reading measurements (and looking at the photos for confirmation) and the physical act of drawing it (the home run "theres no place like home, theres no place like home" ). That is a lot of work, but you will know and understand your site like you never have before. It puts you at "ground zero". Now you can move forward logically. You will, hopefully, be a lot less concerned with concepts such as "perimeteritis" or "negative space" and be more focused on what challenges you have to overcome. Some of those should be newly discovered while some you already knew about. . And you will have a base plan to start sketching in your proposed work. Here again is a place where you can work backward or forward. You want a place to sun bathe and enjoy your coffee -these are "activities". You want some privacy and not to be bothered by road noise these are "experiences". Ultimately, you need actual dimensioned physical space, structures, plants, etc, where you can do these activities with the desired experience these are the "requirements". You seem to be thinking backwards by first defining the physical requirements for the experience before the physical requirement for the activity. Glenda the Good Witch said "it is best to start at the beginning and then follow the yellow brick road". I agree. Your list of activities should grow as you do your existing conditions plan (passive activities are also activities). Certainly, you will become aware of more aesthetic issues that will need to be mitigated or enhanced along with the primary ones. Parking, arriving, maintaining, entering, exiting, viewing, bringing in the groceries, playing with the dog, . are all activities, all will yield an experience, and all have physical requirements. Start by planning the primary activities. Place those that are movable where they least conflict with other activities and near supportive activities. If you need a patio, put it in the plan before you think about screening it (opposite of your current thinking that is starting with the screening). Enhance that space (it may begin to screen it). The design will evolve. Just dont make the secondary physical requirement (the screening) become the primary activity and then have to then figure out how your primary activity is going to work within it. Build your landscape around what is important both philosophically and physically. Perimeters and negative space evolve within that bigger context. Starting with a "mixed border" that is "10 out and 56 long" is the same as designing a planting bed and then trying to figure out what to plant within it. Put on the ruby slippers and click your heals together.

this spring one of my huge new dawns had rrd. i removed the plant, removed the 19 multiflora patches at the edges of my property and bought and distributed predatory mites. well another huge new dawn [i had three in all originally] has just put out fall growth full of witches brooms, so i am removing it now. it was about 30' away from the previously infected plant. there is a belinda's dream nearby with red new growth, which is small, but not really strange looking. i am keeping an eye on it, as i cant find any descriptions that mention if its new growth is supposed to be red. most of my HTs have red new foliage, and always have in the past. it is so frustrating that the biggest most vigorous established plants seem to be the hardest hit. i noticed the plants mentioned as getting RRD seemed to usually be huge climbers esp. new dawn, and shrubs, then HTs. i realized i hadnt seen minis mentioned. i searched gardenweb mini rose forum for rrd and rosette, and got zero posts about rrd. i dont know if minis are too short to get it, or mini growers are spraying miticide non-stop to kill the red spider mites, or the red spider mites are eating the eriophyid mite [which i've read can happen] ann, you posted last summer: The reasoning behind using wiltproof ties to the way that the flightless eriophyid mites get around- they are dropped by breezes when the breeze slows down. Thanks to the dissertation of Abdullah Kassar at WVU, if they land on a rose, they sense it and stay. If they land on a non-rose they try to catch the next breeze away. What we hope is happening with the wiltproof and other anti-transpirants is that they land on the wiltproof and reason "not rose" and leave. So as to how often to spray wiltproof...you'd like to keep the leaves and stems coated. Spray accordingly i bought wiltpruf to spray the new dawn i am in the process of removing, and the belindas dream i am watching. i am using it instead of hairspray. it forms a polymer coating, which i think might trap existing mites on the plants, just like the hairspray. i wouldnt give the mites that much credit in terms of intention -- it also might be that the anti-transpirants seal up the crevices they need to crawl into to not get blown about in the wind. in http://www.ars.org/pdfs/rose_rosette.pdf, it says shrub roses are most affected because their petioles provide a tight crevice, whereas HTs arent as good a host. if the mites are so prone to be blown about by the wind, maybe if the do land on a plant without good crevices,either because of the plants natural anatomy, or because wiltpruf has filled in those crevices,the mites get blown off on the next breeze before they can transmit rrd.

At last I can join this thread (gave my talk, took some vacation days!). The experience I have had in historic garden work, and most of the historic places I am familiar with, are public gardens not because of the gardens themselves so much but because of the person who originally owned the house or estate that has then been turned into a museum. Therefore, the focus is to attempt to portray a certain significant time period in that person's lifetime, and the garden therefore is supposed to reflect that. So ideally, the landscape should be brought back to look like it did during that period of time the museum is emphasizing, even if the design was relatively new and not "mature." That's the ideal. The point of restoring the garden along with everything else is to allow visitors to feel like they have stepped back in time and are seeing the grounds in much the same condition as the important historic figure would have seen it. Not the way it looked fifty years later. This is rarely done, however. Mount Vernon prides itself on having completely redone their restoration to reflect George Washington's design for the flower and vegetable gardens. However, the trees he planted around the big lawn in front are way overgrown and too big to look anything like what Washington saw there during his lifetime. Gives completely the wrong picture. But no one's going to suggest we cut down the trees George Washington planted (except me)! So there is a conflict between authenticity of material (original trees) and authenticity of look (replant to get the right size for the time period). In the case of Hillwood, Mrs. Post intended early on that the house be made into a museum to house her vast collection of Russian and French art, furniture, and porcelain. She had the gardens redesigned for the purpose of entertain groups of people, and often led tours of the gardens herself during her lifetime. When deciding to do a massive restoration of the grounds, they were faced with lots and lots of huge trees which would have made it impossible to restore the vast collections of azaleas, rhodos, camellias, and other flowering trees and shrubs that were part of the original design but were languishing under all the towering evergreens and shade trees. So. What to do? Archival photos tell the story of what the grounds looked like, and so lots of the trees have come down and been replaced by the same but smaller, to get the same look as during Mrs. Post's time. It gets controversial from time to time, of course, but there's no other course of action if you want the garden she had. As an example, there are five immense arborvitaes that dominate some shrub beds on either side of the formal lawn. They're about 30 feet tall. However, in the mid 1960s, they were about 6 feet tall and meant to be kept that size by shearing (as were most of the evergreens). The rhodos actually tower over the little sheared arborvitae in the photos. So, we're yanking out the old ones and putting in new, shorter ones that will be kept in proper scale. Drastic, but necessary. There will be fights over replacing the huge American elms, but that will eventually be done as well. As for whether the garden was at its "prime" during the mid 1960s, which is what we are trying to portray, (the design dates from about 1957) it all depends and what you like, mature shade trees or blooming borders! A logical question to ask is, what happens when the new trees outgrow their allowed size? Obviously, we'll replace them again. If this doesn't get done, then you are back to losing the totality of the design for the sake of a few trees. Saving the mature trees at an old site can then lead to a "restoration" that can never be authentic because the right plants can't survive in the altered conditions. That in turn leads to problems if a historic site has an educational mission, as most claim to do. Add the complication of donated funds with many strings attached, making interpretations say what the donors want instead, and you have a real mess. I've been there, fought that fight, and lost. That's why I'm at Hillwood instead of one of the historic sites that are practically a stone's throw from my house. Sorry this is so long. I'm having a day off to plant some new perennial beds. So out I go for more soil prep. The plants arrived yesterday from Bluestone. Fran

I would not let anyone talk you into leaving that maple where it is. I'm overstating the point to make it so please don't be offended - but it looks ridiculous there. It would be one thing if it were rendered insignificant by other mature trees in the yard, but as it is your major tree, to have it two feet from the foundation is simply absurd. And if your neighbours complain about your insensitivity, ask how much they'd like to contribute to the replacement of your foundation, which will be losing its battle with the tree shortly, or if they're up for going up the ladder to do your quarterly eaves-cleaning (the brain wards are full of people who have fallen off their ladders cleaning their eaves). And offer to buy them a maple just like it (get it identified on the maple forum if you don't know what kind it is) to plant in their own yards. In particular given the work you are planning on the house, you can be entirely excused - the tree will be horridly in the way, and it may even die. A convenient excuse - use it! Do talk to them in advance if you know they feel strongly, but it's your yard, not theirs. Karin L PS, I do like your fake closed window. PPS, I have raised two kids in a house with old siding covered in old peeling paint (and then there is the inside). Neither one is precisely mentally handicapped. I think throwing siding away to protect them from lead is thoroughly misguided. Other reasons to throw it away may be valid, like rotting and the paint won't stay on it (though I quibble with that diagnosis). Not to say you shouldn't do what you have planned, but just to be clear on your reasons. PPPS, if you put the siding for free on craigslist, you might not have to take it to landfill.