Okay - so I took a long lunch today and went to our awesome little nursery here. I broke out the pocketbook, but I am going to take the left overs home to my house so here is what I got: I ended up going with a white/lavendar/purple/green theme . . . begonia - white tiarella cordifolia elephant ear - illustris diamond frost - euphoria petunia - superbells white sweet potato vine - sweet caroline snapdragon - angelface angelonia - serena lavender cabana - trailing blue bacopa snowstorm - giant snowflake saparagus fern lysimachia - sundew springs coleus - velvet lime new guinea impatiens - lavender creeping jenny heliotrope - baby blue imp. coneflower - coconut lime zinnia - star white polka dot plant - white splash a small bay tree parsley oregano - sweet and spicy golden oregano greek basil whoo hoo!

I've been watering with municipal water for 30 years with no filter with fine results....but maybe they would be truly incredible with a filter! I wouldn't stress over that detail for now unless your water is super high in chlorine. Rain barrels and watering cans set out ahead of time to out gas chlorine and warm up are fine ideas for watering a 4x8 bed though, but not required with my city water. You can find good info for raised bed gardening in the square food forum linked below. I would go with spacings that weren't quite so tight as the square foot suggestions. Your soil should be okay, but it isn't the super specialized Mel's Mix on which the spacings are based. Here's one possible layout with my sq. ft modifications: 3 tomatoes in a row a foot in from a four foot edge (preferably the north end) with large cages or a trellis for support. This 4x2 foot area for 3 plants allows you to let the plants grow without much need to remove side growth. 4 peppers in the next row...make this row 30 inches in from the starting edge. They have a 4x1 foot area to grow The tomatoes and peppers can go in after your last frost date and will grow there all season til first frost. Buy young transplants at a local garden center. Save growing your own for another year. Pick varieties with short days to maturity. You will still wait till at least mid July for a harvest to start....maybe later. Tomatoes and peppers do well in large containers with potting mix (not soil) Check the container gardening forum for info. One plant per large pot is best. Look for tomatoes recommended for containers as some varieties are HUGE. The pot grown tomatoes and peppers may ripen ahead of the others since the soil will warm faster. Plant beans in the middle section and Spinach and lettuce on the other end. Adjust the amounts of each to suit your food preferences. Plant bush or pole beans after your last frost date. Direct seeding is fine although you may see transplants for sale. I'd only put in a few transplants if any since direct seeding gives a harvest almost as quick. Most bush bean varieties will be ready to pick in 7-8 weeks or so and may keep producing if you keep them well picked. Pole varieties need a sturdy 8 foot pole to climb. They will take a bit longer to start producing but should continue until frost if kept well picked. Space them as described in the sq ft charts or a bit farther apart (4-9 seeds spaced out in one square foot). Bush beans can be planted in two or three plantings put in 2 weeks apart to have a longer harvest time. Later plantings could go in where spinach and lettuce grew in the spring. Lettuce and spinach can go in early as seeds or transplants while we still have freezing nights. I'd go with seeds or else start my own transplants inside right now. Space out 4-9 seeds or plants per square foot and harvest some when young to keep the spacing okay. Harvest later pickings by removing the large outer leaves and letting the rest of the plant keep growing. Lettuce and spinach do not grow well in the heat of summer. They will send up a flower stalk (bolting) and the leaves will get bitter. Harvest them completely if this starts so you don't loose the crop to bitterness. Heat resistance varieties, shading and enough water can help, but figure on replanting later in the summer for a fall harvest. You may use the space where they grew for a mid June planting of bush beans. Perhaps remove an early bean planting for a late summer replant of spinach and lettuce. Starting them in the shade of other plants may help for the summer planting. Or grow transplants in a cooler area. Your 4x8 bed should give you a manageable area for a new gardener and allow you to learn a lot without being overwhelmed. Good luck. Hope you love it! Here is a link that might be useful: Square foot gardening

Hi Christine, welcome. Sounds like a good start. The candytuft might be fragrant. The Achillea I dont' believe is fragrant, and my The Pearl spreads like crazy. It is just flowering here and lasts a long time. Ground Hogs love it. I could probably list a ton of things that work for a white garden..if you check out the threads below you may come up with some ideas. ( Too many to list, not knowing your garden size, location, sun/shade, moisture etc.) Can I suggest some White Lilies Asiatic or Oriental or BOTH! They (Orientals) are fragrant and make a nice impact and are perennial and multiply. The Madonna Lily is nice as well as the trumpet lilies too. White Daffodils for the spring can be planted this fall along with lilies if you want to get a head start. White bearded Iris also last a while and show up nicely. There are just so many options. Christine, good luck, and write and let us know how you make out and what you decide on..and most of all, post some photos if you can. Have Fun..JoAnn

I want to be logical, and not try to design my whole house around a dream kitchen, but alas, I am after all, TKO. Talk me down? I am flailing here, as you will see. I feel your pain because I'm in nearly the same position as you except it's my roof lines that are driving me batty. I've gone through countless iterations of what I want on my first floor and because I have fewer room needs than your plans shows, meaning fewer combinations, I've tried my hand at playing with orientations in order to achieve my multiple goals. What I'm finding is that no matter what I do, when I pull on the string in one place the rest of the tapestry is affected, so design, as I see it (I'm no professional) has to flow organically, one feature flowing naturally into the next. I'm sensing that you're hitting that same wall - the combination of shapes/orientations isn't working throughout the whole house. I wouldn't hesitate for even a moment in scraping a plan that you don't feel completely comfortable with and I wouldn't for a moment think that you're illogical for building a whole plan around your kitchen. I'm pretty much doing that right now. What I found was that the kitchen was the room that was/is driving me the battiest, so if I start with a blank slate (still mindful of my conditions, which in your case would be the underground garage plus other points) and then play around with the kitchen shape + workflow + adjoining rooms & features and get those issues mostly settled in the kitchen then the rest of the house can flow outwards from there. I noticed that your architects original plan had an angled section and that he put secondary rooms in there, leaving the primary rooms in the traditional square/block pattern. The square rooms are definitely easier to work with. Your attempt at a compromise put a functional room into the angled wing and this created an awkward junction between the family room and the kitchen right at the kitchen. Why not continue the angle with the kitchen included and then try to use the space where the two wings of the house meet in a way that serves a purpose. So my words of advice to you are to break the problems down into individual problems and then try to solve one at a time before proceeding to the next. Count on a 3 steps forward, 2 steps back type of process as you'll find yourself going back to what you think you had solved which now presents as a problem due to something you've just done, and then begin the process again, one step at a time. I don't know what you want to accomplish with the kitchen design, but one thing I would try is to orient the kitchen with the family room. In your crooked picture, find the point where the DR meets the kitchen and draw your 45 wall starting there. Then draw another 45 line right at your door, losing the little window wall to the left of the entry. Now the awkward angled space is right where your pantry and closets are located and it is here that you can hide the awkward space into secondary rooms. You have a lot of room to work with in your kitchen space, so mix it up, try things that you normally wouldn't, and may well reject, but try these new ideas in order to see how they play out and how they affect other aspects of your plan. Try bumpouts, try peninsulas, try a banquette, try a bay window, try an irregular shaped room (beyond just a room at a 45 angle to the adjacent room.) Most importantly though is to spell out what you want in your kitchen and which of the designs that you posted most speaks to you.