Jim you could do a beautiful country cottage type garden with daylilies spaced out and then in some areas put a row of daylilies in other places. Here is what I have mixed with my daylilies society garlic, roses, lark spur, coneflowers, poppies, salvias the small low growing type like black and blue salvia, mealy sage, snap dragons, Summer Phlox, Purselane, Blue daze, even herbs look great with them, I plan on having chive mixed in with mine next year. There is a thread somewhere on here that people have posted pictures of their mixed gardens and they are quite the wow factor. Also don't forget you can plant bulbs of tulips and spider lilies aka school house lilies = red spider lilies and other spring bulb flowers to have something growing all the time. I expanded a bed just a few weeks ago and I'm looking forward to next spring like a kid waiting on christmas :) I'm hoping it turns out great. In the area I have in the back ground crape myrtle, turks cap, large leafed spider lily and will be planting dwarf cannas. In front I have somewhere around 20 daylilies with smaller plants in between to fill out the blank spots. Happy gardening Barb

You have a wonderful home. Lots to work with. I'm not much good at this but I do see a plan. It is possible that someone else has suggested this and if that is the case then I am in agreement with whomever it was.(I get confused with all reading, I am a hands-on kinda person) I like the couch in front of the fireplace, placed at the same angle. I was wondering if there was room to offset the couch away from the carpet, and place the armoire in the corner. Is there enough room to place the loveseat in front of the armoire? The armoire is very visually heavy and if it can be placed in the corner it will balance out with the light coming in from the window. I was also picturing the mirror over the fireplace with a red painted frame. If the armoire doesn't have room to be placed in the corner and has to be placed somewhere else where it still looks heavy, you could put a large oblong fairly low white container and place somekind of white arrangement with a trailing white plant that would bring your eye back into the room towards the fireplace. I don't know if this will help or if it works in decorating. When I was in photography, a rule I was taught to read a composed picture. You would look a picture and read it from left to right, just like you would read a book. Anything that is/was placed in the upper right hand corner would create tension and that is where your eyes would go. That wasn't always a good thing because it would take you away from the "focal point". Since you can only view the fireplace room from one direction, I hope this may help. Have fun, don't stress. Oh and as for the oak. I have natural pine and I have found that the darker, grayish shades of paint seem to look the best. Since green is in the family of the complement to orange, I would stay away from green for paint. It will only make your oak trim stand out more.

Congratulations on building your new home. Based on our experience here are a few things you should look into: 1) Whether your shed (accessory building) is allowed in your zoning code. 2) The maximum sq ft of the accessory building that is allowed. 3) How far does it need to be setback from your property line. This varies between municipalities. 4) Make sure your Crabapple tree (Malus spp). is going to do well in your plant hardiness zone. http://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/PHZMWeb/ 5) Regarding the shrubs, in our planting designs we try to only specify plants that are native to the state and region, because of reduced irrigation and maintenance needs. In looking at your pictures, we think that the swale should be usable space for recreation and repose. The trees can be located near the deck for privacy purposes; we recommend planting mature trees (large gallon size) because of higher survivability rates. If you are using the Crabapple tree for privacy, take into account that their canopy range is between 10'-25' diameter depending on the species. Also keep in mind that Crabapple is deciduous, which means you may want to consider a mix of deciduous and coniferous (evergreen). Lastly, we think you should cluster your plantings along the edges of the sides of the property (not in front of the swale); this would make your back yard look bigger. Good luck with the improvements and please post pictures when your done! -DR, Landscape Designer

Keep in mind that, even though you've shown us some pictures, we can't know what happens on your property outside of those pictures. There's nothing wrong with questions that prod exploration of alternative solutions. I cannot tell you how many times people have come here saying more or less to the effect of: "Here's the problem and here's how we intend to solve it .... but that creates a problem. What do we do?" Many times this involves telling said person that they are headed in the wrong direction to begin with. So please understand why people might make suggestions of alternative solutions, or question where you're headed. I'll remind you again, Brodyt, that you not only need the new pictures, but you'll need to be working the walkway problem out in plan view. The sooner you draw the base plan (existing house and porch footprint and drive) to scale, the sooner you can work toward a solution. The way I would approach this is by first roughing out some proposed beds, in order to know that the walk will allow for them. Then you can route the walk around them. One question that you'll need to answer, Brodyt, is at what point you'll want to tie the walk to the drive. I've pointed out that it can be somewhat awkward for the walk to dump directly into a car if one is parked just outside the garage. Most walks terminate very close to the garage door. But this has the negative effect of destroying the planting bed. Nevertheless, it's a decision the homeowner needs to make. Personally, I prefer to take the walk toward the end, or last third, of the car so that if one is heading in that direction, they are not forced to walk in the skinny space between the side of the parked car and the lawn. If there are objects (plants) to walk around, it doesn't feel unreasonable to walk to that location.