If you get yourself some large sheets of white paper and do a 'sort of scale' outline of the two areas you're working with as a first move. Then look out your windows and think about what you would like to see over the various seasons - perhaps this way: the first ones - the earlies such as snowflakes and snowdrops and glory of the snow. The early Narcissus from whatever is hardy in your zone. And what keeps them company - forget-me-nots and polyanthus and the early primulas. If you have unfriendly summers then you can treat the polyanthus as annuals. Calendula is also a vivid possibility, as are pansies. Around them are the 'bare' patches where there are dormant plants, or various shrubs both deciduous and evergreen. (Both is better: one gives some form to the garden while the other provides interest over two to four seasons. Ones with interesting stem colour and form can be delightful in winter, for example.) Then there's the Grand Display for spring - and that's when you need to think about colours and heights and flowering times. You also have some lovely leaves unfurling, such as some of the hardier japanese maples which can either clash unpleasantly or really lift your garden pictures into the sublime. Just remember that it's a very fleeting event and the yards of green leaves hang around like a hay meadow for months, in some cases. I can tolerate that in the less public areas of my yard but I prefer to have other eyecatchers about while the leaves are feeding the bulbs below. Flowering plums and dwarf fruit trees, early Clematis, if that's seasonally possible, and the early perennials such as Astrantia, Heuchera, Euphorbia which give lasting colour and texture. Then the later bulbs - remembering access to do any tieing to stakes you might need for Gladiolus and Dahlias or Dianthus. Instead of mighty swathes think, perhaps, more of 'settings and backgrounds'. Little vignettes linked by colours and repetition because this is a public area and you are sharing your tastes with others. If you want bulk quantities of bulbs for filling the vases and gifting - think of making an industrial growing area in the more private part of your yard - a cutting garden which can also double as a place to try out new varieties and hardiness and longevity before you put them on display. And, as you plot and scheme on those sheets of paper - put in the access tracks for the inevitable lifting of over-large clumps, and soil feeding with barrow loads of compost, and deadheading. There are few things as attention-focusing as stepping on something beloved inadvertantly while dropping heavy tools on something else... When you've got it all on paper - go out and check your reality. From your planting diagram you can work out how many of what you will need. For such a large area think in terms of clumps of five as a minimum. Write the numbers under the plant names in the planting shapes on the paper - then create a list of numbers, species, and varieties - and -place your orders, please.

The "Apothecary Rose" is a nice antique rose. Mine is not very well behaved and the thorns are many and sturdy so I wouldn't advise planting herbs close to it that you want to fuss with. *ouch!* But for herbs to accompany it, the first on my list would be garlic. Garlic is one of the great companion plantings for roses and it is at home in an herb garden. The softneck varieties are usually grown in the warmer parts of the country. I prefer the hardneck varieties though. Many of your Mediterranean herbs (lavender, thyme, sage, rosemary) are great herbs that require little water. In fact, they will prefer less water than your rose and definitely less rich and better draining soil as well. As long as they are shaded - which the rose would provide, violets are a nice underplanting for roses. They too have a long history of culinary and medicinal use like the rose. They will be happy with the moisture level your rose needs but they don't like the harsh sun and heat and will stay to the shade of the bush. As far as other xeriscapic herbs, I linked in an article for you. FataMorgana Here is a link that might be useful: Xeriscape Herbs

Larry, My garden started small, and I added to it every year until about 2005 when we started having more persistent drought and our family started spending a lot more time fighting grass fires, brush fires and wild fires. Since then, my expansion efforts have been hit and miss. Every now and then I've added a little more growing space, but I've wanted to add a lot more. This year, I am adding a lot more. I don't know just yet how much more we'll add this year, but the area we just rototilled and fenced adds about 2000 s. f. more. However, that doesn't necessarily mean I will have 2000 s.f. more than before because we are abandoning a lot of the west and north end of the original garden because it has become too shady to grow many veggies. It might be that if I measured the area we are abandoning to the shade (I will grow shade-loving flowers there and maybe some herbs there), it will just about equal the size of the new gardening area out back. My expansion plans include another area of about 1200 s.f. north of the garage. It is the worst possible clay in the world and there is no way we'll be able to rototill that very deeply, so we'll likely build above-ground using hay bales to build the outline of the raised beds and filling in the interior like a hugelkulture bed topped off with compost from our big compost pile. Then we'll put down cardboard on the remaining area around the two long raised beds and cover it with spoiled hay and chopped/shredded leaves. If we don't have too much rain the next couple of days, this is the area where we'll be working this week. I've always let my pumpkins and winter squash roam and ramble throughout the entire garden which makes it hard to harvest the other stuff at times because the vines are everywhere, so I'm looking forward to being able to let the pumpkins and winter squash roam and ramble without having the vines bury the rest of the garden. If the vines grow outside the fence, I am sure the deer will prune them back as they do when the vines escape the big garden. Then there's the lily pond......which sits right outside the sunporch, in between the house and the detached barn-style garage. You walk right past the lily pond as you go back and forth from the garage to the house to the dog yard. I love my lily pond, but ever since we started having more persistent and long-lasting droughts, it has been hard to enjoy it because once the creeks and ponds dry up, the water moccasins move to the pond. We never had water moccasins in the pond regularly until the drought of 2008-09, but we've had them for part of every year since then. For the last couple of years we've contemplated taking out the pond. After one-too-many close encounters with a water moccasin being a foot or two from a human being, dog or cat, we've decided to fill in the pond this spring. I'll miss having the little fish, frogs and turtles there close to the house, but I sure won't miss the water moccasins. We can't fill it in until enough rain falls that our one remaining pond that still holds water has enough in it for us to move the fish and the water lilies there. Once that happens, we'll fill in the lily pond and plant some sort of a garden with raised beds on top of it. It might be a garden of strictly ornamental plants, or it might be a small potager filled with herbs, flowers and just a few veggies....likely a couple of tomato plants, peppers, and some greens. If we get all this done this spring, that will give me three new growing areas to make up for the northern and northwestern edges of the current big garden where the shade from the adjacent woodland is taking over. Then, there's two more areas I want to develop into new gardening areas, and I also want to do something to change the Peter Rabbit Garden. Maybe I'll take it out completely. It sits directly north of an adjacent cow pasture and is a snake and bug haven throughout the warm season. I've always worried the neighbor's cows will reach through the barbed wire fence and eat the Peter Rabbit Garden's plants, though they never have. In its early years, the Peter Rabbit Garden didn't have those issues with snakes and tons of bugs migrating into it, but as the droughts have worsened, all the wild things have, naturally, flocked to any area still green and moist. This is a year of many changes on our property, and it sounds foolish to be making all these plans and new areas when we are in Extreme Drought, but I'm gonna do it anyway. I always say I'm cutting back, I'm simplifying things, etc. but I rarely do it. I also would like to plant a lot more fruit trees and grow more than just peaches, plums and figs. I now have my eye on a new area south of the new garden we're building. I haven't checked its soil yet, but it looks like it might have some fairly decent soil there. We could fence it off and plant a small orchard there. For the last few years I've put a lot of gardening plans on hold because of persistent drought. I've been waiting for better weather. Well, I don't know that we'll ever have better weather, so I'm just going to go on and expand and do the best I can with whatever weather we get. Dawn

We aimed to build a 2000 sf house and ended up at 2150. No basement, because we're in Hawai'i. Our great room (kitchen + dining + living) is 18 x 33, open on 3 sides to the outside. We would have loved bigger (who doesn't love bigger!) but everything seems to fit and we have the option of moving our dining room outside to a covered patio, since we have year round good weather. The great room is connected to another 800sf of outdoor living space. It really helped us to layout our furniture and go from there.