The fastest growing big Hosta here is 'Abba Dabba Do', even in heavy shade, not to mention how showy it is.' 'Paradigm', 'Bressingham Blue', and 'Blue Angel' are medium, big, and big, respectively but here they want less than full shade. Given light they're pretty fast, though. The Halcyon family are slow here and don't get all that big, but there are other good reasons a couple of them are HOTYs. 'Regal Splendor' is cheap, sturdy, showy, and a good background to lower clumping ones, and say, isn't it a HOTY as well. 'Gold Standard' is just that . . . 'Spartan Glory' is fast and medium big and easy on the eye. Don't forget some fragrant ones . . . a drift of plantaginea or . . . 'Katie Q' is fast and medium big. Visitors almost always pick it over 'Earth Angel' that's right next door. 'Carolina Sunshine' is fast and a big clump easy. 'The Razor's Edge' is looking like a quickie as well. Just some fast flashes, off to supper. Happy Trails, hh

At this point, it's ANYTHING! I am so excited about expanding my beds this year I don't know what to do with myself. And to see everything waking up from the winter sleep is just so comforting. I'm even doing container gardening this year. Each plant seems to have it's own kind of reward. Herbs are always a favorite for me because not only can I use them to cook and such, but the bees and butterflies love them. The Yarrow from last year looks like it never died. The Sweet William never did either-- I took clumps off of it to plant elsewhere. The Cornflower I WSed is about 7 inches high already and it's been in the ground since late March. And I just picked up some trailing Geranium and Non-Stop Begonias at a nursery near Cooperstown (the Begonias wowed me to no end. I couldn't leave without some). I now have a better looking shade garden plan than I ever intended! I thank God for the opportunity to garden and all the help GardenWeb folks have given me :-)

Soil is very important for blueberries especially the Ph. I think a lot of varieties would grow there so you could probably pick most anything that was a northern variety. Duke is my favorite blueberry in terms of flavor and it's an early season which seems to give us a better harvest than later varieties like Jersey.

I am sensing by your comments, NYC, that you are not quite getting the purpose of the sketch I offered, which is to inspire a direction, not to prescribe a specific, etched-in-stone solution. The concept is: visually obscuring the back door some from a distance, and using minimal signage, combined with a modified walk layout (which you are invited to improve upon,) in order to direct traffic to the front of the house. Once people are on the way, they will continue to the front door. The concept would be refined by working out all of the details of how it is to be done in PLAN VIEW, not in a perspective view picture. The measured plan view lets you know exactly how much distance you have from one object to the next, in order that you can place things properly. Regarding proximity of arbor to back door and the issue of impeding light entering the house, it looks to me that you have roughly 40 or so feet of space between the house and the parking area with which to "play." By the look of the sketch, I think I've plopped the arbor somewhere between 12' and 16' clearance from the house. In the plan view that you create in order to organize future work, you could place the arbor 20' from the house, if you thought that improved upon its placement. So I can't really grasp why you'd use light entering the house as an obstacle. The arbor goes where you put it. Where I put it, it doesn't even look like an impediment to light to me. Any nearby trees have a much greater chance of affecting light entering the house. In another, separate, picture, it looks like you have much less distance between the parking and house. One, or possibly both picture views, may be misleading as to what the real truth is. That's, again, why the actual landscape-work-to-done must be laid out in a measured-to-scale, PLAN VIEW. Regarding "framing" -- edging -- the drive or walk with shrubs and/or groundcover, I do not see why you think this is necessary or desirable. Well grown and tended grass, in the places where there is sufficient light, seems preferable. In the areas where there is not sufficient light, a low groundcover would be best ... not as an "edging" per se to the paved areas, but as a bed of groundcover that works on its own accord. If it happens to abut the pavement, that is not a problem.