If you have any plans to put in a more permanent walkway, I'd stick with a few annuals and perennials in the planting area until you decide what you are going to do. Any shrubs or more permanent plantings will get destroyed if you ever do any construction in that area. Usually the hardscape would be done first, plantings later. Spend some time lurking and reading old threads on the Perennials and Shrubs forums, and your regional forum. Also visit New to Gardening to learn some basics about soil, and gardening techniques that will ensure a reasonable level of success with your plantings. Go to the library and take out some books on gardening and design, and visit nurseries in your area to see what plants are available that do well in your climate. Read the tags on the plants, and takes notes. You can look the plants up later on the web to learn more about their characteristics and cultural requirements. Once you have your garden area prepared, experiment and have fun. Annuals will give you a lot of color all summer. Perennials will increase in size and return every year. Ordinarily, I would recommend some shrubs, but if you're going to make changes later to the walk, I'd hold off. Also, you'll need to know how much sun that area gets and what kind of soil you have. It will probably need a lot of amendments due to compaction from construction around the house and the habit builders have of taking away your topsoil and replacing it with crappy subsoil. The area under the deep overhang of the roof will not get any rain on it, so keep that in mind when planning for plants. Until you learn a bit about gardening and the plants you would like to grow, and gain some hands-on experience, your results may be disappointing. As you learn more, your taste may change, so start out slowly and don't try to do everything at once.

It seems this thread has become problematic for a few of us! ;-) Seems to be common on this forum. One does wonder why. Nandina, since your first post seems to be the most practically knowledgeable as well as offered in a friendly manner, I certainly hope you won't quit posting. While I appreciate all the help I've been given it seems there are some who don't seem to want to provide explanations of their suggestions or cannot see that I wrote a book initially which has a lot of info. A sense of humor is always refreshing and I doubt I even liked pablum when I was of an age to eat it!. Thank you. Some comments on your suggestions - since DH is just finishing building my 12'x16' garden house I doubt I could convince him to build a potting shed as well! LOL Also the garden house will have a porch added next year which is where I will have a potting bench. My idea is to hide the bins with plantings. I think it can work. This is a country garden and we have no near neighbors so compost bins are not a major problem. Your idea of a labyrinth/patio is an interesting one which I might have considered a few years ago before we built our large patio right near the house. I think the labyrinth will be fine once established with a circular planting bed surrounding it, paths to and from, and plantings to blend. Frankie, I appreciate you hanging in on this thread and your attempt to define this elusive basic mission statement. I really don't see why this should be a problem for anyone who wishes to help as so far no one has been able to define clearly what it means in landscaping. The parameters I set out for this project IMO are more than enough info for anyone to understand what my basic mission is. BTW for anyone who thinks I'm copping out on stating this basic mission, I can tell you that I have helped several organizations create such a statement so it's not a foreign concept to me. The low maintenance requirement, I agree, has not been well enough defined by me altho I think to say that no "high" maintenance landscaping ideas will be implemented is appropriate. So only hardy plants, a minimum of plants aggressive in this zone, shrubs that require little trimming, plants that do not shed noxious seed pods, and little or no groomed lawns. Most gardeners will understand the concept of well behaved, low maintenance plants. As far as low maintenance hardscaping ideas (such as for paths) I'm definitely looking for suggestions. I love gardening and my DH is always helpful so we expect to continue to spend many hours a week and more at certain times of the year in our garden. I have thot of planting several areas in wildflowers or grasses altho will have to speak with someone at the local Ag office regarding non-invasive plants so I don't use those that could become a problem. I wonder how many here have actually ever planned a garden larger than a city lot. I'd be interested to hear their experiences.

Okay, so here's the deal... Natural bogs are caused by a paradox of sorts in areas where there is both good drainage and constant moisture. This washes away excessive nutrients leaving a very clean environment. Looking at a natural bog, you might just see a wet area covered with sphagnum, but beneath that there is always a very slow constant water flow. In fact, in a trip recently to cape cod, I saw a bog between the dunes with sundews growing in pure sand. There are lots of different kinds of bogs, ranging from seeps to kettle bogs. So the first thing to do is examine your site and determine what kind of bog you wish to emulate. I see you are in NJ, so you may want to visit the pine barrens to look at CPs in the wild. That will give you some great inspiration. Okay, secondly you need to think about your water source. For water to work in a bog garden cannot have much disolved salts or minerals, and cannot be alkaline (in which case it would be a Fen instead). A conductivity test should tell you where your water is naturally. If you're only limitation is nitrogen, then you can seep the water through biological treatment areas first with high nitrogen using species like cattails. Otherwise, you might consider collecting rainwater off your roof in a rain barrel then slowly seep it out into your bog garden. This also has the benefit of naturally treating runoff from your property. My bog gardens are modeled after a mountain bog, imitating natural seeps/springs where streams begin. I design them on a gentle slope to provide drainage with a curved basin wider at one end, and the other end open pointing down the hill. You can model a bog after any kind of natural system though. Go see some different types in the wild, and give some thought to how they work. After all, Nature is by far the best landscaper and should be your #1 reference for how to do things right. Through observation you may even decide to do a kind of bog no one has done before. Hope this is helpful.

Thank you both for your attentive answer to my inquiry. I don't have too much issue with the SVB. They usually destroy my first crop of zucchini right around the time I get tired of picking 5 or 6 new squash every 2 or 3 days... I just pull the plants and start new ones in their spots and by the time I am missing having zucchini, they are back in business again! They also usually take out my pumpkins (regardless of the type) before I get more than 1 (sometimes 2) nice pumpkins from the vine. It's sad, and unfortunate but I don't really mind. I might have to stick with moschata types though, since I was able to harvest 4 nice sized butternuts without any attention being given to them last summer (lots of traveling, little time for gardening). As far as the ability to get creative with my plants... The area I grow them in my tiny little yard is right next to the south side of my house. It is the farthest corner of my yard from my backdoor, and it is very warm there - reflection off the WHITE exterior of my wall certainly helps, I think. Anyway, this area is about 9 feet wide by 12 feet long. I put a bed in there, shaped like an "E". The Backbone of the "E" runs along the side of my house and is 12 feet long. The backbone is about 3 feet wide. Then the "spokes" coming off the E are each about 4 feet long and about 2.5 feet wide. This gives me just enough space to be able to access each area via a walkway. Two of the spokes have 7 foot trellises "permanently" in place. The trellises are 10 feet long 4x4's from recycled wooden pallets, with a cross brace and nylon garden netting for the vines to grow up. Last year this space was used for onions (the base of the E - no trellis), a cheyenne bush pumpkin (I got one nice sized pumpkin from it) and two butternut squash plants. The area got completely overgrown with weeds, as I was unable to really get in there to tend it given my schedule this past summer, but I still got 4 nice sized butternuts out of it. No weeding, no watering, etc. I just went back there to harvest when the time was right. So, creativity wise, I think I have it covered (although I'd be interested to hear other suggestions). I have another area I "could" run the vines if necessary, but that area has been decided will become a "naturalized" flower bed for my wife. The bed will kind of hide the squash vines running up and over the trellising from the street view. So, I don't want to actually have the plants running on the ground in there... kind of defeats the purpose.