Welcome back to the wonderful world of gardening! :) (I'm in a happy mood because all of my crocus are blooming!) Without going into too much detail, rotating is used mainly for two reasons: to help prevent the build-up of disease and to help avoid depletion of the soil of certain substances. Any basic gardening (vegetable) book will usually go into detail. But essentailly it boils down to moving plants so that you don't grow the same types of plant in a spot year after year. I started listing what shouldn't go where, but really it is easier if you look in a book. Or online. But corn next to lettuce isn't a problem, whereas peppers where your tomatoes were last year might be. Cheers!

Hi len. Thanks for the reply. The back of the property near the drains are almost certainly an easement of some sort. Here in the US, easements can be nearly impossible to avoid in tract neighborhoods. Typically the only restriction is no concrete structures. You can do a lot of other things though. For example, the area is fenced in with the rest of my yard now and the posts are set in concrete. A garden including trees should be ok. They just reserve the right to bulldoze the entire thing including the fence with no notice. Having said that, this is very unlikely but still possible if something undeground breaks. The front door of the house faces the southwest with the back yard pointing northeast. The back fence is maybe 70 feet from the back of the house so the shadow from the house shouldn't be an issue. The face of the uphill area in the back faces the southwest. The land just barely slopes away from the house downhill toward the northeast for maybe 50 feet, then noticeably uphill for maybe 20 feet. There's a 15 foot deep deck on the back of the house that's making it hard for me to mentally estimate. As for the planting along the contours, I think that's what I was envisioning. This would create an area that's relatively flat and easy to elevate if needed. That would also give the sloped area in back to the trees which I think need more drainage. There's enough space on the (north)west side of the house to plant a number of trees. I could easily put them in a line down that fence instead of in back. My only concern there is that this area can be sort of a valley between our house and next door. This might make a light problem. Although the area never seem to be dark to me. As for the fruit tree size, I'm worried about full size trees. Maintenance will be tough enough. And I'm worried about picking and spraying such a large tree. I like the fast bearing nature of the dwarf trees as well. If I lost one or had to cut it down, I wouldn't feel so bad about it. brian

This is so off topic....but Back story: I manage an apartment complex that is a block long, working for the same family that developed the area back in the 60's. They built 3 blocks of similar buildings, 2 sold off as condos. The same gardener worked on ours and one other. Because of my background and interest in gardening, I have directed our gardener for years. The builder has a pride of ownership and we spend a lot of time making sure the block looks good. The next block, they changed from a relative of the condo board president who pretended he was a gardener to a massive corporate service a couple of years ago. (Their complex looks run down and beat up) Friday I get a call from a person living in the next block. They ask if I would be interested in "beautifying" the street by replacing our "dead" trees with new ones from the local "City Beautiful" group. Caller said since our trees are all dead and since the city does not prefer them anymore, the condo owners did not want to replace them. I told the caller that I would be happy to look over their plans and submit to the owner if they look good. BUT, I will not agree with the use of trees similar to the ones they used down the street or a succulent that I have been dealing with the city about since they were put in (they block the view of oncoming traffic resulting in a very dangerous situation-the plants are 6-8 feet tall in the center divider) The caller comes unglued, starts yelling "I am not your whipping boy" and "Don't blame me for all your problems" Hello, these are street trees we are talking about....lol And the ones the city use will block our ocean view in a year or two, the ones they already installed look like crooked teeth and have not been maintained since planting-about half need to be removed and replaced already. And I already matched our lawn trees with trees like they used in the center divider a few years ago. And by the way, our dead trees are deciduous and not dead. And most are only 8 years old...and in bloom. People and gardens....passionate feelings (if she really wanted to beautify the street, she should remove the 20 feet of half dead cacti at their end and the 8 dead cars that belong to one of the owners of the condos in her section)

I plan sort of. I have a garden blueprint from 10 yrs. ago. I spent many hours making it. Without this I would not know where anything is. At the end of each season I do a rough "inventory" of everything that has been added and where (roughly) then put it away until January. Then out it comes along with the photos from the garden last season and I plan what I need, wish and want for this year. It's my greatest tool because as the garden matures, my memory fades of what I put last year or 3 years ago. It helps but like others who have spoken before me - if I don't like a look, I change it. In the fall the master blueprint gets changed to reflect what I have done. It sounds tedious and time consuming but each fall it takes about 1 hour to mark the changes on the plan; but it saves hours and hours of work in the spring - because I know where all the holes and nooks are that need a little something.