Welcome to the landscaping forum and the world of gardening, but like Catkim I agree this might not be the right place for you to start your trip up the gardening learning curve. Your space is "designed" and it is gardening, not design, that you now want to do. We tend to stick to design questions around here, but lots of the other forums on GardenWeb focus on the plants instead. Learning about plants will involve learning about their behaviour (which is seasonal where I live, maybe less where you do) and what the boundaries for their use are. They are living things, and have needs and limitations. Just like dogs poop, trees have roots! And just as you can't get a cat and expect it to learn to fetch (OK, the rare one you can!), you also can't have flowers that don't at some point die off and leave you looking at bare ground, dead foliage, or a woody mass of stems. My own gardening learning curve was greatly helped by gardening magazines. I imagine there are several published in and for your area, otherwise there are national magazines that sometimes address your climate. What's nice about magazines is that they address what is going on in your garden now, and they remind you when to do things to be prepared for the coming season. So even if you buy a stack of older magazines at the thrift store rather than a subscription to current publications, try to read the magazines in the months for which they are intended. Gardening is, for better or for worse, a seasonal activity. You can also only buy things in season, such as bulbs or seeds, so making a habit of visiting local garden centres regularly will also help a lot. They usually bring in plants when they are blooming or at their showiest, so you can learn a lot and find things that address your flower needs at that moment. There may be specific design questions that come up as you garden, for example where to put trees and shrubs. Those you could certainly get help with here. KarinL

Two suggestions - consider investing in a landscape design. Having a professional walk the property and look at all the factors (e.g., drainage patterns, sun/shade patterns) and evaluate your landscaping goals, etc. can be well worth the price of the plan ($200-400). This could save you a lot of planting mistakes, wasted effort and help you see some issues that no one on the internet will be able to spot. Also consider incorporating some native plants into your design/choices. Especially on the fringes of your wooded areas to create a more natural transition. Plus native plants support the ecosystem that you're moving into and attract the natural insects and birds that your kids would love to observe as they play outside (I'm not talking about biting, stinging insects - you'll get those no matter what you plant; these are caterpillars and butterflies and moths that will be attracted - think Monarch butterflies that only eat milkweed, same concept). Also problem areas like poor drainage and wet sloping areas to a low area have perfect native plant solutions and believe me that willow is not the only one. Native plants can be beautiful, have flowers, great fall color and be treated just like non-native plants in a landscape. As far as planting next to the property line, remember that anything that hangs over the line can be trimmed by your neighbor (the part that is on his property, that is). Research the mature width of a plant and then divide that number by 2 to get the distance from any line or wall for planting. Recognize that the weather is warming up and that anything you plant now will need to be watered through the summer - fall is the best time to plant trees and shrubs. Get a plan now, plant only as much as you feel you can keep up with with, mulch well to retain water and suppress weeds, and plant a lot of annuals this year to enjoy while you get ready for fall. In the meantime, research your desired plants so that you know what you're getting. Even with a plan you may not like everything that the designer chose - I swapped out a few things on mine for plants that liked the same conditions. A plan helped me feel like I had a roadmap and I was able to implement it as my finances and energy allowed.

How about some Rangoon creeper as a vine on the pergola. It will give unbelievable fragrance. There have been a recent thread with photos about it. Oops another bunch of vines that would be killer would be the aristolochia gigantea or A. littorals, and the others in that family. They are so unbelievable in their beauty. These choices might need SOME shade from a tree so they would be good once the trees that you plant around it get a bit of size to block some of the all day sun.

Thanks so much, floral_uk. I will look into that. We had, 6 ft away from our property line, an enormous American beech UNTIL, sob, sniff, the owner of the acreage west of us decided to log his trees for income (he was being taxed for "build able lots" in a watershed area, but told that he'd never be given building permits). He took our next door beech for the lumber and left many others. The strong winds took down the beeches he left, but other saplings close to us (perched water table) survived. There are many suckers, now about 25 ft tall but back then, I could never manage the strength to shovel through and rptransplant the suckering offspring. I used to go to the trunk of the huge beech, wrap my arms around its girth and KISS the smooth silver bark of its large trunk -- uttering some amalgam of earth-appreciative thanks. There ate medium-sized beech trees in that area (winds blow from there) and somehow, I have a small sapling that emerged on our propert (I must transplant it into a better location, however). Thanks again. Beech tree hugger PS -- I've read that the American Beech is very similar to its European cousin.