I'm not sure I quite follow. You say you are not looking for free advice and that you are offering an opportunity. Does this mean you are looking to pay for a winning design? Otherwise it sounds like you are looking for free input, same as everyone else on the forums.

Assuming you are looking for typical free advice, and that you plan this to take many years, you are much better off breaking up your projects into bite sized chunks, rather than 70 acres all at once. For example - front yard, back yard, woods walk, etc. Otherwise your scope is just too big.

Ok, I looked you up on google earth and also on a topo map. The two combined give me a base map of the area.

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Next I looked at soil info.

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I read some of your post and looked at some of your site photos. I concluded that your new house site, pond, and drive are in the location shown below.

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It appears that you hired farmers to construct your pond and now you have a ... farm pond. In a few years the drive across the pond embankment will become a continuing maintenance headache. Why do I say that? Because the photos of construction do not show a keyway and core feature that would prevent water bleeding into the drive sub-base. Nor do the photos show proper compaction of the fill material. And the embankment slopes were not built to prevent erosion.

I do not see a pond discharge feature to handle major storm events without loss of the embankment. But this may not be a problem because of the small drainage area to pond surface ratio (drainage area shown in green dash). The bad part then becomes the lack of water that will result in a stagnate scum filled hole instead of the pretty pond you have in mind. Go look at the old silted-in pond site about 1500 ft north of the new pond to see what I mean.

But as a farm pond, it's a nice one. You gonna have cows?

I poured a cup of coffee and mulled over your question. Did not need to research your soil profiles as your area is famous for onion growing and tree plantations; ie: sandy soils with ample underground water reservoirs.

The majority of posters here have limited knowlege of southern growing or ecology. Someone with those qualities may read your wish list, crawl out of the woodwork and turn out to be the right person for your situation. I hope so.

In the meantime may I suggest that you advertise in the Atlanta and coastal newspapers (Sea Islands, Hilton Head, Beaufort and Myrtle Beach, SC.) for a 'plantation manager'. Many of the plantations in those areas are being gobbled up by development and there are some very talented persons out there, looking for employment, with the knowlege you need to develop your land. They have done it for years, keeping the machinery running, developing gardens, planting trees, plus they have the hands-on feel for the land and wildlife. They may not have fancy degrees but if you will take the time to visit area plantations you will quickly recognize what a talented group they are.

You are looking at a long range project which requires planning and maintenance. You need a strong, dependable arm beside you to pull this together. Start searching.

Historical and regional perspective is something that is often looked at in design context. Let's see - Georgia land owner, big agricultural land, and looking for people to work for free.

Do we get to help with the install and maintenance, too?

gottagarden - you responded: I'm not sure I quite follow. You say you are not looking for free advice and that you are offering an opportunity. Does this mean you are looking to pay for a winning design?

My statement was meant to be quite simple --- I suspect that few have the opportunity to participate in a 70 acre design project and have any hope of seeing their input utilized. I respect the opinions of others. I am simply giving anyone who wishes to participate the OPPORTUNITY to participate. At this point, I have no intention of paying anyone - "expert" or amateur for a design. I have 25 years of formal education and 49 years of education in the natural world -- yet, I am not an expert. "Experts" are generally classified as such because of their education and/or experience. Landscape design certainly requires special skill knowledge of plants and design. I applaud those who have acquired such knowledge. However, the "expert" opinions are often no better than those of talented amateurs. Anyway, the opportunity is available for those who see it as such.

laag -- see response above. Thank you for expending your time to respond, but, I doubt you see this as an opportunity to interact.

nandina -- excellent, well thought out response. I concur. I have considered hiring someone with "hands-on" experience to live on and work on the farm. My pastor actually used to manage a southern quail plantation and was a horticulturalist and gardening contractor for the "rich and famous" of south Georgia. He has been a big help with advice.

pls8xx -- thank you for spending considerable time with your input.

Your overlays and depiction of the drive-way, pond and house site are accurate. The actual watershed is about 3 -4 times your dashed line. Area and slope were measured with GPS and equals a bit over 13 acres.

The pond was built by an "old-style" contractor, using an excavator and bulldozer. The core is 12' plus compacted clay. He definitely left something to be desired on the inside slope and had less topsoil there than anticipated. The back-slope on the dam is approximately 5 to 1 so I think we will be OK there. I am a bit concerned about the erosion issue on the interior of the pond.

I believe we will be OK with driving across the dam as it is constructed very similar to the pond dam at my Mother's which is still in good shape after over 40 years. See pond at 32.0317°, -82.4456°. That pond is 4.2 surface acres. However, you could be right.

The pond 1500 feet to the north "appears" to be silted in due to the aerial photo showing all the vegetation growing on the pond. That is mostly floating pond lillies.

Stagnation should not be an issue. The actual watershed is 13.6 acres. Normally in SE Georgia it takes between 5 and 10 acres of pastured watershed to support 1 surface acre of pond. In this instance, we have approximately 8.5 acres/pond surface acre here. Water covered the entire bottom of the pond after a 2 inch rain. Subsequent thereto water level continued to increase beginning 1 surface inch per 24 hours then finally down to 1/2 surface inch per 24 hours.

I installed a 6 inch pond siphon system for water control and have a mild run-around on the east of the pond. Thus far, surface level increases after 2 additional 1-2 inch rain events indicate the pond overflow should not be a problem. However, again, you could be correct. Only time will tell. As an aside, the steep inside slopes were fiercely debated. I finally agreed to the steep inside slope to prevent aquatic weed growth knowing I could come back later and decrease the slope if need be. But, very good point. The dam design had some slight variation from the government engineered who design. Only time will tell if we made the "right" choice.

Current minimum water level in the pond is approximately 30 inches. At full pool average minimum water depth should be approximately 5 feet.

As to the question of whether I will have cows --- that is still a point of debate. My wife says NO. I say maybe. In any event, most of the watershed will be fenced to prevent access should we have cows. IF we have cows a water trough with an automatic float system will be utilized to provide water for the cows. As you probably know, cows can devastate a pond.

Thank you all for your input. I will post a basic design soon and should anyone wish to comment, those comments will be welcome.

The nearest "official governemnt" weather reporting station is approximately 6 miles to the East-Northeast at the URL below. http://www.griffin.uga.edu/aemn/cgi-bin/AEMN.pl?site=GAVI

The site has excellent historical and current weather (including soil moisture) information.

It would seem that the design of this project is two fold: first the land use/ land planning of the overall 70 acres, and second, the conversion of a small part to residential use.

Since land planning of a particular tract can't be effectively discussed without a base map, I supplied one to accommodate any comments I might want to make. No, I didn't spend a lot of time doing it. Unfortunately it lacks the tract's boundary.

Many of the more valuable threads found of this forum fall in two types. First is the type where someone starts a discussion on an element of landscape design with an exchange of ideas and sometimes examples of projects that show the opinion of the posters. Then there are those threads that spring from a particular project and its design, where forum members comment on design features or suggest solutions to design problems.

What I'm getting at is that you may be disappointed if you expect someone here to participate in the design of your project. I think it's more a case of do you want to participate in the forum.

Along those lines it would interest me to know why and how you selected the particular site for your house rather than some other part of the 70 acres. What did you hope to achieve by building the pond? Why was it put in that location?

I am still confused about the intent of your posting. 70 acres of largely undeveloped rural land is quite a design undertaking, to say nothing of how meaningful any specific advice/suggestions may be generated by an Internet discussion forum. Exactly what type of "participation" were you hoping to engender from this?

Several random thoughts about the project which may prove useful in your planning.

1. You mention erosion, although no indication of the extent. Suggest doing a search and becoming familiar with 'Vetiver grass'. It is available for purchase to anyone from several Florida wholesale nurseries. Will grow happily in Vidalia. Pretty grass. Anyone setting up a southern homestead project should reseach Vetiver grass for its many attributes such a water purification, erosion control ability, very useful as a hedge plant, etc.

2. I always took a bit of time planning nature trails, walking the land looking for specific things first such as specimen native flora, areas that might be attracting migrating birds, isolated ecosystems suitable for planting more native vegetation. But I was also alert watching for particular spots where the plant foliage might be greener or more abundant than adjacent areas. The lands that I was working with were very old pre Revolutionary war in nature. With acute obervation I was able to locate old wells, indian burial grounds, house foundations and old bottle dumps on customer properties. A metal detector is useful in this project and a wonderful activity for kids. Never know what may be hidden in the debris of old farm land.

Thank you all for your thoughtful replies. I am in the office right now so don't have an awful lot of time at the moment. I did take time to prepare and post an aerial image showing the location of the boundaries (inside the blue lines), the pond (blue in color), proposed drive-way (light blue in color), house site (inside red lines) and possible nature trail (bold white line).

The areas that are green WERE plantation pine which was clearcut harvested during the winter of 2006-2007 before I purchased the property in May, 2007. The area was harrowed with an offset harrow and is now populated by low-cut pine stumps and native vegetation.

I will certainly research the grass. I have been looking at native grasses thus far.

I will take time tonight to respond specifically on the other points but hope the posted aerial is of some benefit.

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Hopefully, this aerial photo will shed some light.

The area to the West of the redlined house site is in various mature oak trees - to-wit an oak ridge.

Pond site was selected as it was the best site on the property for the pond from a construction standpoint. Basically you drive down the drive way, the pond is in the bowl-shaped depression that forms the head of the branch to the south and the house is on the oak ridge to the west of the pond.

Again, I will take more time tonight to specifically address all your comments.

Thank you again,

Joel

pls8xx and gardenga148:
I completely concur that the project should be broken down into 2 broad areas:
(1) Land use/land planning for the overall 70 acres
(2) Conversion of a small part to residential use

I am still contemplating #1. However, I do believe I have settled on an aspect of overall land use.

I believe, basically along or near the nature path, an area of sufficient width and composition to benefit bobwhite quail usage. In the old days, farms had small fields with lots of overgrown fence rows. That habitat was ideal for bobwhite quail. I believe I want to lay out the farm along those parameters (knowing that certain desires/goals compete with others). My research, consultation with my pastor (former horitculturalist and quail plantation manager) and personal experience are leading me to a strip approximately 15 feet wide of lespedeza intermixed with something like switchgrass or one of the other native grasses. I believe I want to combine the "habitat utility" of those or similar plants with a stepped (height and width) variety of native flowering, perennial plants, choosing a variety which is consistent with the wildlife management goal and visual appeal goal.

There is a substantial likelihood that I would also break up the 28 acre agricultural field with a couple of cross corridors of similar plant material.

These are among the types of things I am struggling with now. Comment on layout, continuity, plant selection and the like are what I am seeking. As each of you have said, this is a huge, long-term project and I seek input from others who's experience may bear on the layout, design and plant selection. I understand there are many, many different "right" and "wrong" ways. However, respecting the opinions of those participating in these forums, I would be interesting in reading your opinions and views and why you have those opinions and views.

With respect to what I hoped to achieve with the pond. I like water. I like the ocean, rivers (large and small), lakes and ponds. I like to fish ocassionally but what I REALLY like is to feed the fish. It is very soothing.

The pond can be an attractive focal point to the landscape. It can provide the "mirrored" images of the foliage surrounding it. And, if need be, it can provide for some irrigation. I have always liked looking out across the water, of sitting on my porch and looking across the water. I liked the idea of driving down the driveway into the house site and looking at the house across the pond as well.

Back to another aspect of the overall land use. We initially intended to put the entire property into a pecan orchard, for both looks and future revenue. However, knowing there are always bad years along with good years with any crop, we decided that was not very smart. We also became interested in muscadine vineyards and fruit production. So, we will probably incorporate a bit of the pecan orchard, vineyard and fruit orchard. We want approximately 1/2 to 1 acre vegetable garden site. I believe we also want a "gardening" experimentation site of approximately 1/2 to 1 acre as well as a small greenhouse.

I strongly expect we will leave the remaining oak ridge in mostly an as-is condition for the wildlife usage, but, with some modification to make in more friendly to the turkey and quail.

I seem to have rambled a bit and apologize. But, with such a large overall project, it is difficult to include all the desires and keep them organized and coordinated.

nandina, with respect to the observation of native flora, existing but possibly hidden features, I will try to do some walking and photographing this weekend. One focal point at the northern most point of the property where you see Potential Well Location, there was an old homeplace there. The shallow well still remains there. I expect to clean that well out and hang a usable well bucket there. An arbor is a possibility there. It could be purely decorative or be a "natural" appearing arbor with cultured muscadine vines so one could sit on a draw a bucket of cool well water, pick a few grapes, sit on a wooden bench, eat the grapes and look out over the landscape. One feature I didn't know about until buying and spending time on the farm is that for whatever reason, it attacts substantially more summer and fall breezes than most areas in the surrounding countryside.

Thank you all again for your input and I look forward to more comments, critiques and suggestions.

I will attach images of some of the wildflowers or weeds growing in the cut-over areas now.

Sorry, forgot to mention, the light green areas are 50 foot wide rights of way I had cleared and have harrowed for the purpose of planting annual and maybe some day perennial winter and summer food plots for deer, turkey etc. I expect to build some type of climate controlled wildlife viewing area just south of the house so you can view the wildlife to the east and west on the planted rights of way.

Below are some of the native plants flowering last weekend - September 29-30, 2007. In the old days, I called them weeds. In my newly enlighened state, I call them native, flowering perennials -:)

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