I have tons of privet on my property and have struggled for about a decade to try to get it out with limited success. Still have it. As for smaller shrubs, I have found what appears to be some of Japanese hollies, too, although there are only a few of them. Hope you have the hollies and not the privet. Privet suckers as well as re-seeds, so it is a pain. Yes, Esh could probably give you an ID in a snap!

Thanks for the compliments and identification. :D I guess I have to wait for the plants to bloom to finally identify them. Dutchman,s Breeches, Squirrel Corn, Fringed Bleeding Heart. All look extremely similar. And now I am in the hunt for my pictures of the trillium and bloodroot when they were in bloom. So, I'll be posting more pictures soon! And more when I visit the park which I got my inspiration from.

I wouldn't recommend mowing particularly for the reasons given above that the nice stuff still needs to feed it's seeds and bulbs in order to produce for you next year. My property sounds similar to yours in a way that ours is in an old farm woodlot but inside the city. I'm near the edge of the woodlot so you can actually see through to the other side but we are working on building up the lower and mid sections of the woods to provide more privacy. I'm not sure how big 1/2 acre is but it's surely much bigger than what we have. Here is a picture: When we moved here our woods was a MESS, full of trees felled by the builder, garbage from the city, garbage from the old farm etc. We had 2 major invasive alien plants 1) Oriental Bittersweet carpeting in a woven mat throughout our property and 2)Garlic Mustard by the thousands maybe even tens of thousands. It took us most of the year and a half we've lived here and almost all our free time to remove those two alien invasives but now that it's done we are soooo proud of ourselves. We took it all out by hand on hands and knees and now we are only dealing with the odd seedling that managed to sneak by us. Of course with both in the woods and on the properties/lots to either side and behind us, we will always have to watch out for it but at least the worst of it is gone now. We also had poison ivy but we totally lucked out that not ONE plant was growing on our property and the only one we've ever found had made it's way under our privacy fence from the neighbor's house (they didn't know what it looked like). The next thing we did after removing all the alien stuff was to put paths. Paths are great. It keeps people from trampling the "good stuff" and adds a bit of "fun" and "whimsy" to your back yard to have a miniature walking trail right outside your door. Our paths are also just plain dirt. We thought of putting mulch but we don't need it because our soil is clay and sand so no water stays at the surface to make "muck"...it's always dry. We put in a fire pit (legal in this city) and made some sitting areas and a spot to hang a hammock with special flowers and woodland shrubs nearby for interest. We've since added a TON of native woodland plants, ferns, shrubs and trees which you can't really appreciate from that photo above taken this past spring but we've really added a lot of stuff for the small space there is here. Anyway, getting back to your original question, no I wouldn't mow it. Go on hands and knees and pluck out the bad stuff, make note of things that you want to stay and make a natural garden plan either in your head or on paper of where you want things to go. I think you'll be much happier with the result if you do it by hand. You'll have very few seedlings if you keep ahead of flowers going to seed, the overall appearance will look much better and you will find that the natural native plants will move in on their own to fill in a lot of the dead space left by the missing things like Garlic Mustard. Let us know how things go :o) Barb southern Ontario, CANADA zone 6a

Fatamorgana- I wish we had some of your nurseries in our area. We are going to try some different places this year, but so far not much luck. One place I am looking forward to trying is Northland Rosarium, which is supposed to have a very good reputation. They are an hour from my house, but it should be a fun time :) I called all over this fall looking for some apple trees and so many of the nurseries carry plants that are not hardy in my area. We're only one zone difference, but I was amazed how many plants they carry would be questionable in Spokane's zone 5b. I guess they carry what people request, but I can't see buying plants that won't make it through out winters....and that's with last year's almost 100 inches of snow, which broke all records. The year before was third most snow ever. Before that, eastern Washington hadn't seen that kind of snow since the 1950's. As much as I do try to support local businesses (no one in our immediate area has a nursery) I am thinking about trying more Internet sites. I hope that by staying in the Pacific Northwest, I'm buying regionally, if not locally.