Our city has to come in and trim trees too. I wish they would just REMOVE the tree. I got tired of them whacking at my silver maple, making it lopsided. It was ugly, but not only that, I was worried it would fall over and cause even more damage. I tried to convince them to cut it down (they have taken out other people's trees), but they told me no. I probably could have fought it a little harder, but I just gave in and paid for it to be taken down. Ouch. It's an expensive item. I drive past houses on some of our major roads that have trees cut in the V shapes to accommodate the wires. I can't say I like those any better than my lopsided trees, although at least they are more balanced. I've been trying to establish a shade garden, it is not easy!

OK. In your post about cover crops I mentioned that generally native plants don't need a lot of soil improvement, being already adapted to local soils as is. I think since your soil had a lawn growing more or less successfully on it, you don't need to worry much about improving the soil. If you were in new construction that would be a different matter but you're not. In our rainforests, as in most rainforests, there is very little organic matter or nutrient content in the soil itself. Too much rain, everything gets washed out. The nutrients tend to be contained in plant biomass, either living or relatively recently dead and fallen to the ground. If you were to dig a soil profile in the Quinault rainforest there'd be an organic layer of leaf and twig debris on top of the soil along with fallen logs and branches; then there'd be a very very thin A horizon which is where most soil microbial activity takes place; then there'd be a heavily leached B horizon (the lower part of what's called topsoil) and below that there might be subsoil or there might be just rock, or a glacial hardpan. I'm surprised at how thin the soil is that these trees are growing on! Roadcuts and landslides in the Olympics show big doug firs growing in just a few inches of soil on top of bedrock. Typically for rainforests, both temperate and tropical, most nutrient recycling take place in the organic litter on top of the soil and the top few inches of soil. Some plant roots reach deeper of course but mainly for water and balance, there's not much microbial activity down there. That's one reason you see so many plants growing on top of rotting logs and stumps - it's where the nutrients are. So, what to do with your garden. You could plant now, without adding anything to the planting holes, and mulch around the plants - that would mimic their native environment. In our area you can plant hardy plants any time the soil is neither frozen nor waterlogged. If this will be your first winter in this garden, you might want to see how it performs over the winter, flooding and drainage wise, before finalizing your planting plan. Or, to be sure you've gotten the lawn grasses out, you could go with the cardboard covered with manure and tree chips route, then plant in spring. Typical ryegrass lawns are not that persistent, but if you had bentgrass or quackgrass, you need to be sure it's gone before planting. Adding organic mulches should take care of any nutrient needs. Yes our soils are typically low in calcium, but that's what the native plants are used to. Don't worry about it, or the pH. Leaf mold from deciduous trees would add calcium too, it's the coniferous stuff that makes our soil acid and calcium deficient. But what does 'deficient' mean if you're growing plants that are adapted to that state?? Calcium content is mainly an issue when growing (non native) plants from areas where the soil provides more calcium than ours does. What, no salal?

That's a lovely garden, Vivian. I think most of the ones you chose ought to do ok there. I used to have Sun Power in a fair bit of sun on the side of my house and it fried badly...although I think it was likely from the heat bouncing off the siding. My Stained Glass has some rumply leaves mixed in which are from cold damage in the Spring. Happens to it every year, pretty much. Since you asked, here is a pic of one of mine grown in more sun. Actually it only gets a few hours late morning to lunch but it does not like it. So definitely don't plant Elegans in the sun!

Caminne, that is a BRILLIANT idea, because I definitely need as much bookcase space as I can squeeze into every room, and at the moment there are no built-ins. Now, les917 cautioned against putting something just to the left of the door as you come in (i.e. on the living-room side of the door), to avoid cramping people (or dogs) as they step around the door, which I think it good advice. But if you look at my floorplan, you can see that there's quite a bit of space between the front door and the front wall windows. Floorplan: I think it should be possible to put a bookcase so it more or less lines up with the left side of the entrance to the dining room, which is about where I'd want the living room rug to end and the entryway rug to start. (Not describing this too well, but will try to photoshop a furniture-arranging floorplan soon.) In any case, I think that would leave plenty of clearance to get around the door - more clearance than you'd have in the entry to most historic rowhouses around here, anyway. That would preclude using the big desk as a sofa-table-type room divider, but I think it would solve two serious storage problems at once. I wonder if it would even be possible to have two bookcases back to back, with one facing the living room for books and the other offering baskets for leashes and mittens and whatnot on the door side. I'm thinking maybe about 36" high - high enough to make a divider, but low enough not to block light and to make it easy to put things down on top of. Hmm....