Here are your photos; always easier if they're in the thread (copy the tag line from Photobucket into the message here). I assume these are all down the same side of the house.

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With respect to the plum tree, if you'd prune the poor thing so it had some shape and left some space under it (growing space and human headroom) it would probably be not nearly so annoying. At least you have some fairly significant greenery from it. Of course fruit trees do always look their worst mid-season.

Other than that, there are several directions one could go with giving you advice, but I find I don't know enough about your preferences to even start. Do you want privacy or an open feel, and is there a certain look you like, such as informal or formal; and does the space serve any function for you, and do you love having lawn? For example, your house would suit something fairly well-dressed, like hedges and topiary, but is that "you?"

Down the side of the house is probably easiest; I'd make a little linear shade garden (lots of hostas and ferns to discourage weeds) with a walkway of some sort to get along it. You probably co-own the strip and don't want to work on the neighbour's side, so it will be pretty linear... you even can put the pathway against your house and the plants down the centre, or make the path meander. The other option, if you aren't a gardener and just want it tidy, is to make it all pathway; flagstone, pavers, gravel, what have you.

The other thing I'd be inclined to do is to select a definite shape for your beds and line them in something prominent like (gee) brick (unless that's too much brick). It all looks a little amorphous now.

As for the space alongside the garage, doesn't look like room for anything other than a couple of annuals or a single patch of ground cover.

Karinl,

Thank you so much for taking the time to move my pics over and give your opinions. Yes, I am a bad plum tree pruner :( I don't know anything about pruning them and also left a message about how to prune it in the fruit forum. I agree that it probably wouldn't bother me so much if it was out of the way more. I just wasn't sure of how to go about it. I am quite open to any kind of plan. I really like bushes topiary etc. like you mentioned, but I wasn't sure how to make the whole thing work with the tree and the existing purple sandcherry. What kind of annual would you plant in the small space beside the garage? It is about 3 feet long and 2 feet wide but tapering near the end. As you can probably see, I just laid some sod along the brick pathway, I was thinking about pruning the tree and making a bigger more defined bed around it as well as edging the bed around the porch with brick as well. I wasn't sure what colour to do though, the pathway is a light red brick and the house a medium red brick. Should I stick with another red tne or go with gray or something else? Thanks so much for your help already!

Cheryl

The following might be helpful when thinking about ideas for what to do in your "weed breeding ground" (or what not to do depending on what you think of it!).

Here is my part shade bed that runs along the side of my garage. It's on the difficult side as it gets sun only when the sun is directly overhead.

{{gwi:40142}}I've got your typical shade plants for up here: hostas, ferns, columbines, toad lily. I find that my hostas and columbines do *very* well (possibly too toasty for the ferns as the thick mulch helps retain soil moisture). I've also been doing some experimenting with evergreens and have included sweet woodruff and hellebores (towards the gate). I'm really liking both because I think they've got cool looking foliage that never looks ratty. The columbine looks *very* pretty in bloom, but the foliage starts looking ratty by summer.

As an FYI, my property line extends from the wall to the fence line. There's enough grass in front of the gate to walk out that way if I wanted. I do end up using the neighbor's grass to park my butt on when planting, weeding, watering. The bed is about 3' deep and this is it's second year of existence.

-Stephanie

P.S. I agree with Karin that you might like your plum if you had it pruned so you weren't walking into it!

Regarding annuals for the small bed, I think if I were you I would just go to the garden centre and pick out a few that you like. If you go that route you can change them every year. Take a look at perennial and evergreen groundcovers while you're there and see if any appeal to you; it's also a question of what kind of maintenance task you want to do there. Some people would just fill that narrow gap with gravel or river rock. It looks like a pretty sunny exposure so something like thyme would probably do well, although it would creep across the walk and need annual trimming. Actually something like black mondo grass (Ophiopogon) would make a very dramatic impression (not sure how well this does in full sun though), and a good backdrop for brighter plants or a small garden ornament or something, depending on what your style is.

For overall yard layout, it might be better if you posted yet another photo from right back in the street, and maybe others will have some ideas; bed layout is not my forte (as my own yard attests!). It looks like a pretty linear yard, and so you maybe want some lines that offset that, maybe some curves, some lines that run across the property, and so on. Even a row of little boxwood bushes along the curve of the pathway might look nice. I think you're best off not to let the existing shrub and tree dictate your design, as they are badly placed to begin with. Just pretend they aren't there and design what you like, and then massage your design a bit and prune them to fit in as best they can. (adapting to existing constraints, now that IS my forte!)

Are there any other lines of travel that need to be considered, or boundaries that you want to define? Also, do you like where the sidewalk currently abuts the driveway, or would it be worth considering reshaping that a bit? It might actually be fun to think about (though not to do!) relaying the pathway to exit straight from your slanted front door to go around the other side of the plum tree and hit the driveway about where you'd get out of a car. But that's a much bigger project than just some flowerbeds, and you can certainly achieve good results with what you've got.

By the way there will likely be books on pruning at your local library, such as the one I have by David Joyce, Pruning and Training Plants. The shrub by the house looks like it could use a little control too!