Everyone has such pretty gardens above. As for the planning, I think it all depends on what you begin with, costs & style. I love the look of formal & modern landscaping; however, I bought a resale 8 year old home that looks somewhat traditional with an existing patio & a flat square backyard with a 6 ft privacy fence surrounding it. The patio is a curvy number with smaller interlock brick with a beige stone. It kind of sets the tone for the yard. It's not what I would have done, but it's nice enough that I can't justify replacing it. The original back fence line garden came with a few clumps of ornamental grass, a willow type shrub, a few other false spireas & a peony. In a bed that was about 3 feet deep. Already overgrown with weeds. So I spent the 1st summer cleaning that up, saved a few choice plants, planting 12 trees - front & back yards. And I started making fence line garden beds. Obviously have to plant the larger foundation plants & get them thriving first. So in 2 summers I made about 300 feet of garden around fence areas between the front and back. Planted the trees, 30ish varying shrubs, 45ish roses & quite a few perennials. Lots of edging & mulching. I also have a 6 ft fence along the front yard on one side. When we moved in there was no plants along the sides of the yards. I am very happy with the progress so far. But I want to extend more, add more, etc. Because my yard is very flat it was relatively easy & cheap to get as many beds as I have. If we had to do more hardscaping it would not be as simple. So I think a lot of someone's garden planning comes from the complexity or issues their actual property has ie. slopes, drainage, soil types, etc. Also I live in zone 5 so hardiness is a factor. I love boxwood hedging around beds, but it's easily ravished by winter winds, sun & ice damage. And I'm too lazy to winter protect that much. There are just so many variables. This is a picture of 3/4 of my back fence line last September. Started out as a 3 foot deep straight line bed. Here's another view of the back fence. There's is a small square patio tucked in the right corner. The stones for edging were used because there was a big pile of them in the corner when we moved in. So this came from an evolution plan. This is my side fence garden bed. Once the hornbeams & limelight get bigger I will widen this bed again.

Oak is an appropriate choice. I’m doing a MCM kitchen where she chose sapele, because it looks a lot like the mahogany that was used a lot in the era. That is in the final selections stage. Heres an original MCM oak kitchen that they updated to a dark cherry. I love bed the originals! I think a classic quarter sawn cherry could work as well. They preferred the dark. Here's one I designed using the cherry, to match the original cherry buffet that was still in the dining room. The kitchen had been ruined by a fire, and someone painting cheap flat white paint all over everything. Yes, that's a 14 foot island taking over the breakfast area too. And, for something completely different. I'm doing a project where vintage metal cabinets are being sandblasted and powder coated turquoise. Color matching range. White Corian counters, checkerboard floors. And the original wood trim, and a new wood ceiling to match. That might be more vintage to you than MCM, but it's still a good look.

vaporvac, I thought that too about the similarity of the outdoor statue to the army of warriors excavated (and I think still being further excavated at this time) in China, but how much more wonderful the originals are! My fake vase is what prompted me to begin studying Chinese porcelain, and of the over one hundred pieces I have only one or two small ones that are not the real thing. The experts on gotheborg.com taught me just about everything I know about this subject, and I'm still a member there. vaporpac, I've only seen the exhibit at the museum in San Francisco, but have heard about the Freer Gallery's. Unfortunately, I'm now pretty much confined to home with my autoimmune disease, although I do view museum holdings through the aforementioned forum's members who hail from all over the world and are kind enough to take extensive photographs, whether from Shanghai, Sweden, Germany or points in between. Lisa, my bowl had been dropped and broke in half and was subsequently put together with metallic staples, a practice used back then to mend porcelain. If it had been untouched it would have cost much more than I'm willing to pay. I think of the damage as giving the bowl "personality". Chinese porcelain in the 18th century was extremely expensive and only the upper classes could afford it, and therefore damaged pieces were often carefully repaired rather than being discarded. I'm sorry for getting us completely off-topic here. Jin, I don't personally care for Tiffany lamps, and the genuine article runs in five to six figures so it's just as well they are not my cup of tea. This little 18th century statue of a laughing boy is my favorite piece of all, and he and I would like to wish you a very happy holiday season filled with joy, love and laughter.

vapor, I can understand that in your climate most of the old roses might be once-bloomers, whereas I'm also able to grow teas, noisettes and Chinas very well. However, polyanthas and hybrid musks are also considered to be in the category of old roses, although perhaps not of interest to you or well-known. I have no clear affinity with any one opinion because you all argue your positions so ably, and I'm afraid I fall in the camp of the wishy-washy. I know that I have an affinity for the old Austins and I thought that Austin's original mission had a touch of genius to it. Now the Austin firm is crossing one seedling with another seedling to achieve yet one more saleable rose, and that dilutes not only the original message but the ancestry of the Austin roses as well. I confess to loving and having Evelyn, but she at least is only a second-generation crossing. Bishop's Castle and other Austins I've had fall into a mid range in terms of ancestry and age, and that shows that I'm no purist. Some roses that purport to have something of an old rose look like the Kordes roses don't appeal to me because of the rather graceless form and thick, leathery leaves. I'm seeing this with my Plum Perfect roses which I would not choose again because of those qualities. None of this is very helpful in terms of what direction should be taken in the future, even assuming that Houzz would allow any deviation from what we now have. I tend to think that the best way to encourage as many people as possible to grow and cherish the old roses is to keep buying them from nurseries so that they can afford to stay in business, and to take pictures of their flowers and growth habits here and to extol their virtues and beauty here. How this is achieved in terms of formatting of the forums is perhaps of secondary importance, at least for me. My main and primary allegiance is and always will be the Antique Rose Forum because it is my spiritual home. However, I must admit that I'm promiscuous enough to admire and lust after any number of modern roses that satisfy my criteria for old rose charm. In this fraught time of climate change and ever-hotter gardens it may also come down to simply which roses will survive best in our gardens, and it will not matter whether they are old or were created yesterday. Charles Darwin may well have the last, final word with his theory of survival of the fittest, whether of roses or of man.