Thanks to everyone for posting a reply! :) I've been really busy with work all week. ideasshare, thanks for taking time to edit and post the photo. I've included another photo showing a pile of rocks that I have salvaged from my property when I moved here. I'm intending on using them somewhere...some in the frontyard and some in the backyard. It'd be neat if I can have some moss too like you suggested. gardendoll, i too realized that I have to consider that the areas around the sidewalk would have to withstand winter salt and doggy waste. I don't want to rely much on perennials as they won't be around all year long. I wouldn't mind few but I'm mainly aiming for evergreens. Do you have a thread going for your new garden plan? woodyoak, I really thought hard about your suggestion and you really made me realize that my squiggly paths are pretty silly! I tried again and posted an updated plan below. It hasn't snowed here yet but I did some walking around and found out that you were correct about only curving when going around corners. Yes, your assumption is correct in that there will be gates on each side of the house...as shown on the updated plan. berndnyz5, you are correct. Before removing the Mulberry tree, I knew there'd be a trade-off with loosing shade but the trade-off was easy considering that the tree was a female and the mess that the fruit made was unbearable. The tree was also an eyesore in my eyes as it was stumpy and hacked by previous owners. It also had a split in one of its trunks which was an accident waiting to happen. Since the house faces west though, when I walk out the front door at about 6 PM in the summertime, I get practically blinded by the sun :S I am aware of the metal brackets that you are referring to and those are what I intend on using for my wood posts. As far as I thought cedar or pressure treated wood will eventually rot. I have until the spring to decide on which type of wood regardless :) There is an old lady who has lived across the street for the past 50-some years and told me that the hedges that I removed had been there for around 40 years. She also told me other neat things like how the driveway used to be by the south-west corner of the property. Anyway, the hedge did provide some privacy and noise barrier but at the expense of being ugly (especially in winter) and super high maintenance in the summer. It was too linear for me and I just couldn't take it any longer. I was surprised after I took it down that I haven't caught one person cutting across the front but regardless, I agree with you and am planning on having something near the NW corner. I was thinking about possibly a small berm/rock garden near the corner but I am unsure how I could link that to the bed beside the driveway. I'm thinking about having taller matter on the NW side and lower matter on the SW side as technically my house address is for the street on the SW side (i.e. the side that I'm planning on putting the new main walkway). Thanks for pointing out about a mulch walkway would be a never ending cycle of tracking it inside the house. I'm going to have to rethink the material for the secondary walkways. I'm planning for the main one to be 4 feet wide and the secondary ones to be 3 feet wide. I'm okay with spending more money on the main one (i.e. tumbled pavers) but need the secondary walkways to be a complementing less expensive material because the walkway are going to be so long. As for the conifers, I'm planning on choosing ones that are appropriate scale for the property and that are slow growing. Since they will grow slowly, if any pruning is eventually necessary, it don't see it as being nuisance at all.

I'm sure your neighbors were happy to see veggies, even bolting crops, over the weedy yard, Spaghetina. Here's a couple of suggestions I have from my time growing organically up in SF and Marin. 1) Most of those flowers of the bolted veggies are edible and tasty. While the leaf flavor has turned bitter through the winter and the taste change that comes with bolting, the blossoms often gain a very interesting taste that is great topping salads or lightly fried in certain dishes. 2) If like germinating your own crops from seed, remember which of your crops are heirloom (their seeds will usually produce true) and which are F1 or other hybrids -- it's seed is typically still viable, but may have very different characteristics than the parent. The GW seed exchange forum is a great way to get those exotic seeds you mentioned w/o having to pay catalog prices or drive all over the Bay area, but you need your own seeds to reciprocate. Some of the best plants & veggies in my yard are from trades I've made with other GW members. 3) To my way of thinking, your soil mix seems too heavily focused on decomposed organic matter and doesn't take advantage of the alkaline SF clay topsoil and it's associated soil flora. The compost/purchased soil is great for nitrogen and drainage and you can artificially pump up the P/K/Fe to grow good veggies & plants in it, but organic amendments like blood & bone meal, fish emulsion, seaweed and others need bacteria & fungi to free the nutrients for your crop's roots. That's generally not true for soluble inorganic amendments, which is why they are popular. There's definitely a risk of adding weed seeds by using your yard's topsoil in the garden beds, but that soil food web is necessary for growing good organic crops, IMO. For plants that need lots of N and like great drainage, I go 2/3 purchased soil/fully composted organic matter and 1/3 native topsoil. For tomatoes, peppers and others that suffer in N-rich soils, I use 2/3 native, 1/3 organic matter.

When I lived in Portland, OR, years (decades) ago, I had a front-yard potager too-- also because it was the only place that got sun. It was also basically wasted space that went through a series of landscaping attempts before I finally decided to make it a formal potager for my sunny herbs and food plants. It was about 25x25 feet square. I took out all the dorky groundcover stuff and fenced the area with a short wood and wire fence, double dug the whole thing (heavy clay soil) and added some good rotted manure. It had a circle in the center, with a birdbath, four blueberry bushes at the cardinal points, with strawberries in between. There were four "arc" beds around it, and then narrow beds along the fence that framed it all. I laid wood chips (free from the city) on the paths. All the beds were planted with a combo of food and flowering plants, just crammed together. It was so pretty! I wish I still had the photos of it, I'd post one here. People used to stop and take pictures of it, and when I taught organic gardening at the community center, I'd bring my classes to my house to show them what could be done. Hardly anyone in that neighborhood grew ANYTHING, so my garden really stood out. Dayle Ann

Jacci- sorry so late to respond! I honestly have no idea what kind of raspberries! But I have learned to get them from a small local nursery (NOT big box store) as they are likely to stock varieties that do well in your area, and they want you to be a happy customer. To be honest the raspberries have sucked until this year. We put in blackberry and raspberry plants 5 years ago and the blackberries took off, but the raspberries did nothing. They grew to a foot tall- that's it- with no fruit. Finally after 3 summers of that, we cut them all down and put blackberries in their spot. Last year they grew the normal foot (no berries) but this year they have come back with a vengance--- must be the competition ;). We now have amazing blackberries and raspberries intermingled. The berries look so different from each other that it is no big deal. As I type, DD is out there right now picking all the berries that are even 75% ripe and eating them and feeding them to the unbelievably spoiled chickens. Good luck and remember--- local nursery! Lindaas- Thanks for the kind words-- it is nice to see how different people garden, it always gives me tons of ideas too! Good luck in the DH dept! I end up doing everything myself because spring time is Tax Season and DH is a CPA! By the time he is available, everything is done...I think he planned it that way :)