haley_z6 - Wow you've done a lot of work! Looks great!! Isn't it so much fun to take 'before and after' pictures.

For landscaping suggestions...
My first suggestion is carefully pick out a fence for your yard. You want one that will complement the architecture and time period of the house. Done right it will look like it has always been there. Another idea is make sure you know where your underground utility lines are (gas, water, sewer). Make sure your plans take into account where these are located. Next determine how much time you'll be able to devote to keeping up your landscape (since you have young children this is a concern). Determining this will influence the type of plants you should select.

Sedum, thank you...the fence we will keep simple and time period, and thankfully we know were the utilities are, we did most of the re-model ourselves...up keep will be easy, my dd loves to pick the weeds with me, my ds can be locked in the yard with us and my SO actually likes to garden...

I only know a few things i want and don't want, but i am looking for general ideas so i can pick and play from them...my old house had many plants already there whereas this house i have a new pallett and need to pick everything off the bat...granted i dont have the finances to create a 10 yr old looking garden nor do i want to, we are going to install a sprinkler system before hand

Haley:

I'm in year 2 of a similar gardening project and the most important thing I've learned is:

Do the Bones First. ie., if you want to put in a path, do that year 1. If you want to replace the fence (something white with some curve would stand out against the angles of the house and be in period) do it year 1.

In a sense you're lucky that the sprinkler system will easily cover your yard without having to plan any planting beds, first. Do that year 1.

Also year 1, start a nursery bed. Rather than buying 16" shrubs and paying through the ear, get smaller specimans of shrubs and perennials and grow them on this year with the plan to place them Year 2 or 3. This will save you a LOT of digging and moving.

You are in the fortuate position to be able to use almost any palette, but I'd stay away from multicolor given the proximity of the house to the corner. "Too much" color variety will look confusing because the eye won't be able to see any one thing. Pick a base color and accent from there. A neat trick is to use complimentary plant forms on adjacent walls to give it continuity, but use different colors of the same plant. The eye won't split it because of the form, but you'll get some "base" variety in coloration.

When I saw the South side of the house my thought immediately went to a good, hardy climbing rose. At our house climbing roses are considered "Bones" and therefore can be planted Year 1. :-)

Good luck and keep us updated!

Martie

Martie thanks for the great advise....Bones is exactly my goal this year...the fence will depend on the $$ we have left over as we still are finishing up the inside of the house, however i would love to get one in now...sprinkler system however is our priority, who wants to do all that work and then tear it up to install a SS, fortunately we planned ahead with the plumbing and have the outdoor meter and everything in place, which is the expensive part of it...

my problem is designing the paths, i need one in the front from the sidewalk to the door and i am thinking from the driveway to the door as well as the side of the house to the porch...i am not sure if i should keep it all straight lines, thought straight is boring to me, or if the house could handle a curving one

the other bonus, we have family that will be able to split loads of plants for us to transplant into our garden, so the one thing we want to spend the $$ on this year is a tree for the front corner.

thanks again

If the paths are for practical use, straight. Otherwise they won't make any sense, and people will be forever cutting corners to take the straight line path anyway. The only way curved paths work is if there is some reason for the curve.

I think straight for the paths, as a house of this vintage would not have used curving paths, and there isn't enough space for curves. The corner doesn't look big enough for anything but a fairly small tree, maybe Amelanchier or Chionanthus or something.

Keep in mind that while overhead sprinkling is fine for the lawn, it's better to use drip or soaker systems for flowerbeds to avoid fungal diseases. Maybe you can set it up for both.

Since you have some experience gardening at your old house, you may already have done this, but I'll suggest it anyway.

Get some big sheets of graph paper, the kind with 4 squares to the inch, and make some maps of the yard. The maps should be fairly accurate (use a tape measure) and should just show the existing elements - like the house, sidewalk, garage. Xerox copies of the base maps, and add notes about any areas that are shady/windy/low/damp, or areas where you need screening from nearby views - phone poles, neighbors' driveways, etc. Then you can use some of the copies to sketch in paths, sitting areas, and bones - hedges, trees, shrub borders. No specific plants yet, that come after you've settled on the overall design based on how you want to use the yard and how you think people people will move through it.

There's a good article in this month's Horticulture magazine about defining major axies as the basis for a design - the author, Gordon Hayward (his wife, Mary, is co-author) has a new book out that I love, called The Intimate Garden.

Drawing up these plans, walking around the yard with them to get the "ground truth," and envisioning the 3-dimensional shapes of elements in the new garden will be a great way to spend the winter, and will help you feel prepared for spring.

In Martie's scheme above, you could call this year 0. It will give you a big jump on year 1 and the ones that follow!

Digging, i like that idea, however i will have to wait till the snow melts to see the real layout, :)

i will look up that article as well as the book, thank you for the the advise

This is probably over kill but NEWFS is offereing a course on Residential Landscape Design. I've taken classes there and been happy with the quality.

I agree that what DiggingTheDirt suggests is the thing to do. Once you get a better idea of what beds, walkways you have people here in the forum can suggest individual plants that would work for the areas you have.

Here is a link that might be useful: NEWFS - Residential Landscape Design Course

Haley, how exciting! The best thing is it's so satisfying to see the improvements, isn't it?

Martie is right about the fence. I can never come up with stuff like that on my own, but when I picture the white curves-on-top kind of fence in front of the house, it would really look right.

I can see this house with some rudbeckia in the front-- I think it would contrast nicely with color of the house.

What a beautiful transformation! vtskiers on this forum has a beautiful website showcasing all her plantings. Unfortunately, you can't access it anymore from Garden Web. I'd email her as she did a renovation years ago and removed many trees as you did. Sometimes photos help the most. She has a lovely garden!

I second looking at Sue's (VtSkiers) photo albums. She has a real talent for plant combinations (very, very professional looking gardens) and like hostasz6a said she also removed some trees in her landscape which would be useful to get ideas. Nothing like a picture being worth a thousand words!