It is always fun to pick up where a crazy lady gardener left off! I suspect future owners of my house will refer to me as that :-) One thing you might be forgetting is that all plants are basically green most of the time, so stuff going together is really not that big an big issue. One exception is probably forsythia with pink flowering cherries, but then, I hate forsythia so I may not be seeing that correctly. But on the whole, in the type of project you have in mind, I would feel quite free to go with whatever plants you like. Another thing, a single forsythia can get pretty big so unless you like that garish yellow colour a lot, three of them might be overkill. One is permitted to throw plants in the compost even if they are still alive. Your kids will be safest if you simply teach them not to eat anything from your flower garden, although I have to admit that I have never been able to bring myself to grow monkshood, even though my kids knew the rule (my son could say Euphorbia when he could barely talk because he knew not to touch his face if he'd touched the euphorbias "dis a euphorbia?"). But the list of poisonous plants is astonishingly long and limiting, and if you also worry about what's poisonous to cats you can't grow anything at all, especially not lilies. Do try to beat your weeds before you plant. It's way easier. Karin L

one spot of our black mondo grasses gets no direct sun, under an acer negundo winter lightning. and yes, carex bowles golden can handle part shade and is a wonderful grass. However,if i had only one grass of all the hundreds, it would be, unhesitatingly, hakonechloa aureo marginata(yellow and grn striped). It is particularly happy/expanding when it is in a spot of great drainage like a hillside or above a wall or edging a raised bed or sunken path.Its fountaining gracefulness is unparalleled and as seen in my photo in the hakonechloa thread,the seed heads are particularly pronounced (whereas you don't really notice them on the carex bowle's golden.) best, mindy

Lioripe likes shade best. Not to say it won't grow in full sun, but I haven't seen big patches of it in the sun. As far as how wide to make the bed...do what would look best with the width of the drive and the length you will have the bed. The lioripe will fill out and cover the edging. Be sure that you can place the edging so you can mow the lioripe when it gets older-we take out sprinkler heads and have to get the blade sharpened after each year's mow. ;) Imp

I have this same grass and I've been trying to figure out what it is for 3 years. I would just ask my MIL since she planted them, but she thinks asiatic lilies are the same as daylilies and already told me that this plant was Chlorophytum comosum, which I have several of as house plants and would not survive outside year-round in z6, let alone 5 seasons, but I digress... This plant gets pale purple, lavender colored flowers in late summer (mid-late August here). The flowers do resemble my neighbors liriope (he has "big blue"), but it never forms the large, black berry-like clusters. Also, the variegation is much streakier and more varied than liriope "silver dragon" or "ice dance" sedge. Some leaves come up more white, others more green, but always streaky, not in clean, clear lines. I'll try to add a photo is mine if that helps.