You will get some suggestions and advice here, sure - not all of it will be from professional designers, but that's not necessarily a problem as many of the "amateur" designers are nicely gifted as well.

But it is a bit excessive to help you formulate a plan in the traditional sense. Even though photos help, it is impossible to get an accurate sense of the site and its varying conditions without actually visiting it. I think you be well-served by hiring a design consultant for a couple of hours to walk you through the property and help you formulate some cohesiveness to an overall design plan. It seems you already have some strong feelings about what you want, but what is notably lacking in your description is a sense on how you want to use the space and how that may relate to the site itself - a on-site designer can certainly help with that aspect far better than some suggestions from remote. It's important to understand that this is really the first step to formulating a plan, with the incorporation of the plants themselves just the final window-dressing.

I've worked with many avid gardeners creating plans that incorporate already purchased plants and you can, with thoughtful planning and preparation, have a cottage-style garden that is not weedy or overly high maintenance but it does take planning and some sound plant choices to achieve. And your DH is on the right track with not wanting to weed-whack around trees and shrubs - weed-whacking/string trimmer damage is the number two cause of plant death, preceeded only by improper or inadequate watering.

btw, avid hobby gardeners with wonderfully landscaped gardens are not as rare as you seem to think. Some gardeners possess an innate design sense along with their love of plants and produce fabulous, well-planned and tended gardens with minimal professional input. Or maybe there just seems to be a lot of them in my very gardening-oriented area :-)

Jacki, how funny! You and your husband can have it both ways. Plant your shrubs, trees and perennials in well marked beds, edged with a spade, trenched and filled in with mulch. Don't make crazy bends or sharp curves and your husband will be able to mow his crop of bermuda grass easily...plus you've given him some opportunities to actually turn the steering wheel a bit!

One way to try to get a handle on everything you have is to simply sort. Make a list of your sun-lovers and shade-lovers. Make another list of your tall plants, medium and short plants (including shrubs). Then maybe make some short lists of things that go well together...dwarf blue spruce, echinacea and daylily; hosta and columbine in high shade, and so forth. Think of using your taller conifers as the backdrop for other plants. (Saypoint has a nice example of that in her gardens, if I recall...maybe she'll post a picture.) That way you have the screening from the neighbors AND the beautiful flower bed. Get out your colored pencils and start sketching the general shapes and colors of your plants...or cut pictures out of catalogs (disregarding scale for now) and just toss them around on the table seeing what jumps out at you.

Separately, think of your yard in general areas. Make a rough birds-eye drawing of your home and yard and sketch in where you might include some beds. Go easy at first and do only a few (maybe 3?) beds.

You are so lucky to have that many plants awaiting their homes. And don't forget; once planted you can always rearrange most things.

Have fun! Wish I was there.
Patty

Thanks you two! After reading my post I immediately wanted to hit the delete button because it sounded so panic struck!! Well....it is!!

I think I need to stop.....breath deeply....and tackle one thing at a time. I always seem to have a tendency to bite off more than I can chew. BTW, thanks for "reminding" me that this is an opportunity.....as opposed to a challenge.

barefoot.....you are so encouraging. I read your post and decided against the valium for the time being. I have already made the lists that you suggested...and I know they will be helpful. Colored pencils, here I come.

gardengal: Some good suggestions from novices are why I came to this form. I didnt mean to imply (or infer...i always get mixed up) that I wanted a professional to help me design an entire landscape...even tho my panic stricken post may have indeed implied just that. And please, let me recant my statement on avid gardeners. I think more than anything else I was keeping in mind several I know personally who have an entire yard with no lawn and no element of cohesivness whatsoever. Oranges planted alongside pinks....no color scheme....just a plethora of pretty flowers all bunched together. *Sigh* i probably didnt articulate that any better than I did the first time.

Again...thanks....I'm anxious to hear from saypoint....as I always look forward to her posts (i thought all this time she was a he tho)

I think a lot of times the weedy unkempt look comes from using a jumble of single plants plopped into a bed. There is no cohesion in that manner of planting and no way of creating a pleasing contrast of textures and colors when all is mish-mash. You need a group or drift of like plants together to make a design impact. Then you need to contrast those plants with another group of plants with texture or color or form that creates a visual distinction from the first group. An so on and so on. One note: I find it difficult to create this pleasing impact looking at flower colors only. Using foliage to find interesting combinations makes a garden much more interesting to me. Flowers can create wonderful accents that draw the eye though. One of my favorite spaces in my garden is a grouping of dark norway spruces that is "lit up" in the spring with a flurry of pale pink serviceberry blooms in front of them. The contrast of foliage and form is pretty the rest of the year too.

You say you paint, think as a painter of highlight and shadow, texture and form. A strip of lawn has a texture and color too that can make a pleasing contrast to busier plantings (and keeps husband happy!) I know you'll be fine, I just wish I had your energy to get that many plants in the ground at once!

I would not put high hopes in the software. I suggest you start by sketching some "big picture" ideas out on paper. Think about how you want to use your yard and how it should flow. Note views that you want to enhance and those you want to hide. You do not need a detailed design for your entire property, but I think it would help to have general ideas...room for a kid's swing there...a veggie garden there...a shady patio in that area.

Leyland cypress...make sure you look around at mature specimens to get a feel for how large these things eventually get. I have seen too many small yards engulfed by a "hedge" of Leylands.

Do you have several of the same plant, or more just one of each? You might be surprised how fast 100 or 200 perennials can get used up in a garden design. You may want to think about creating a "nursery bed" area. Plants tend to be much easier to maintain when they are in the ground and you can move them into place as needed.

- Brent

"...but will if I continue to hold his head in a headlock". I am going to have to try this one on the dh. What Patty said. Drag your pots around the garden and see where you like them. And hey, just becuase you plant them doesn't mean you have to leave it there. Many of us are guilty of rearranging plants like some people do furniture.

Have you made a scale drawing of your property? The suggestion to make lists of the plants you have is a good one. If you know how to use Excel, you can do it on a spreadsheet, making it easy to sort by light requirements or height. Note the plants' ultimate size as well, to use in placing them on your plan.

Once you have a drawing, you can pencil in the evergreens you have on hand, using near-mature sizes, to see how they might fit your lot. Maybe you could use the Leylands as a fast growing screen and remove them when some of the other, smaller ones, fill in a bit. They can also be trimmed into a hedge if you like. Group them together in one "bed" so that you don't have to mow or trim around individual trees. Staggering the placement a bit, rather than using a straight line, will give you a more relaxed look.

Once you have your privacy screen planned on paper, you can decide where you want to put beds for the rest of the shrubs and flowers. They should be sited and placed for easy mowing, as well as for viewing from your living area. You may be able to incorporate them into the same beds as the screening plants, using them as a backdrop, if they won't block the sun. Beds will need trimming to keep the edge neat, and the lawn grass will try to creep into it, so you may want to think about some kind of physical barrier-type edging.

A holding bed is always useful, especially for single plants. You can let them grow for a season or two until they're large enough to divide and plant in a larger clump in the beds. If you have multiples, or don't want a holding bed, go ahead and plant them in one bed and remove some to additional beds next year as they increase in size. Perennial and mixed borders are for tinkering, IMO, so plan on moving things around a lot as you discover that one is taller than expected, or another doesn't do well or you don't care for it, or whatever.

jacki,
An early morning summer shower gives me a few minutes to discuss your dilemma. Perhaps my thoughts will help you and others with 'where do I begin' questions. First, you and your husband will have to decide where to place 'your' garden/s. Can't help you with that one.

1. Everyone who grows a cottage garden will tell you that it is a lifelong learning experience. There is no single answer as to how one approaches such a project and many of the answers lie in individual tastes for plant color, etc.
But, you have to start the project with a good visual foundation.

2. Begin planning with the WINTER GARDEN and any hardscape necessary such as paths, patios, walls. The winter garden consists of evergreens/broadleaf evergreens. As you study pictures of gardens pay close attention to only the winter aspects and hardscape in each picture. These are the 'bones' of a design. Plant those first.

3. From that point you plan a cottage garden by seasons; spring, summer, fall. What perennials have foliage which holds up well throughout the growing season when not in bloom? What types of perennials do you plant together so the foliage of one hides the dying foliage of another? Some of this you learn with experience. Some you learn from books or on the Perennial Forum. A cottage garden is not planned or planted in a day except by those with years of learning, much of it trial and error.

4. The suggestion to just plant your present, assorted collection for later placement is an excellent one. It will give you time to observe the growth and blooming habits of them. Sit down, sketch your land and concentrate on planning only the winter garden first. This is the best way to find the beginning point of any landscape design.

Hello Jacki,
It sounds like you're ready to have a lot of fun! You've got some great landscaping advice already, I just had something to say about the bermuda lawn. It's drought tolerent, durable and self healing but it is terribly invasive and can be a maintenance nightmare around other type of plantings. If you have one of the stolen propagated hybrid varieties it is not so bad but if it is the regular seed grown kind it rapidly spreads by runners underground and on top of the ground and by seed. It doesn't like the shade and eventually would die out around whatever trees you end up planting but I wouldn't want it anywhere near a perennial or shrub border without a serious barrier that goes down at least a foot underground and can be edged or weedwhacked weekly. You know what they say, the best way to grow a burmuda lawn is to drop a sprig in the middle of the yard and then try to kill it.

Happy Gardening,
Maria

Slightly OT: There must be different kinds of Bermuda grass, LOL. The kind we had spreads by stolon, root AND seedheads. We got it out of our yards, only to have to keep watch on all the property edges because it's in the neighbors' yards and keeps trying to push its way back into ours!

No trench or mulch would keep it out unless it was at least two feet deep and retrenched twice a year! I've seen it crawl under two feet of concrete path and come up inside my beds.

Thank you all for the suggestions. I have made all my lists, drawn my house and yard on graph paper, focused on the "bones" and will play with my colored pencils today. In all honesty, I do not feel as overwhelmed as I did when I made my original post. Still...there is much work to be done.

jkom....I was once called Mother Earth by my friends...grower of organic veggies.....never sprayed my roses.....even burned a bra or two......now??? I have become the Queen of Round-Up. I am always pulling bermuda from my beds.

My husband has agreed to give me a small section to call my own. (we are both getting our way, but my section is so tiny) I plan to kill all the bermuda in my area. That's going to be the tricky part.....finding a way to make the two areas join. *sigh* I'll probably be coming back here often to beg for assistance!

Thanks again to all.
PS I'm going to start on my holding bed next. Thus far its been my front flower bed....but I have so many new plants, that just will not work anymore.

When you have Bermuda grass (which I do) or any other invasive grass, you need to think carefully about how much flowerbed/lawn interface you want to maintain (defend!) , and how to do it. As the most obvious example, it's more work to have a free-standing bed completely surrounded by lawn than to take advantage of permanent "edging" offered by foundation, patio, walkways, curb. I have chosen to allow some of these features to determine the size and shape of my beds in some cases. Shady beds are often your friend, as the grass, while it can still invade, won't be as happy and vigorous there. If hubby only likes to mow, and not edge, then you can end up having to hand- or weed-eat edge it yourself, hire someone, or invest in some kind of hardscape mow-strip. Bermuda also influences "pathway" choices--either needing more of a hardscape path, or best to let the grass be the path, possibly using countersunk stepping stones that you mow over, rather than keep grass out of, say, a mulch path, or let the path border a bed and edge the outside of it adequately so that the path is an extension of it so again, there is only one "edge".