diane - thanks for your comment. I actually have heard the same thing regarding paint vs stain, so I will have to get more info. on that. Thanks for the caution. Regarding the door and shutters - I have a replacement door stored in the garage because my new door warped inside of a year - and I was going to paint it BM Homestead Green - which is lighter and more aqua after the door gets replaced. I don't know why someone would put a brownish red roof on a white house but they did, so I feel like they fight each other. The shutters were already painted that color which is SW camelback. I have a detached garage with the same roof and siding, and I picked a yellowish cream garage door - probably should have gone with white. So to connect it with the house I left the shutters their goldish color. I painted the door its current color because its a richer color to corrdinate with the roof. Do you have any suggestions for the door and shutter color? When the door gets replaced I am going to get a new screen door because that one is not in very good shape - I thought I would get one with a white frame. I really like the BM Homestead Green for the door, can you suggest a shutter color that would look good with it and still coordinate the garage to the house? What you suggest for landscaping sounds lovely, but I really am not ready for that, and I love the simpler design that Yard created. I work a lot of hours so simpler is better for me. I see a lot of yards that are all garden and they really are beautiful, but I like the idea of just mowing over grass for my needs. I aso prefer a more "woodsy" look, to a lot of flowers, even though they go with the cottage look, I think a flowering vine, a good window box and the flowers around the entry shrub give enough blooms to go with a cottage look. I would love to hear back about the door and shutter colors if you have any suggestions. Thanks again!

I think you're going to need a deer fence to keep them out of your orchard...but planting in front of the fence will look nice and help disguise the fence. From what I've read, you can either do an 8' deer fence, all the way around, or two fences (about 4' apart) that are 4' tall. I don't know if this will work, but it's supposed to, according to some other forums. I've also read that an electric wire or two will work, but not here. We have an electric fence around our horse pasture (seven wires, two hot ones) and the deer jump over, crawl under and even walk through...very carefully. As for the roses, my deer like to chew on the new growth, but I plant them against the house or fence...and I put lots of lavender, other herbs and deer resistant plants in front of them. They still reach though in the fall, and nibble, but an exposed bush will get eaten down, pretty fast. Butterfly bushes are not thorny, but the deer don't care much for the taste. They also ignore (for the most part...babies taste almost everything) coneflowers, cosmos, daisies, lilacs, bee balm, mint, lavender, alyssum, marigolds, pontilia, blueberries, stock, tomatoes, acorn squash, sunflowers, white petunias (don't know why) pansies, violas, columbine, sweet woodruff and the strawberries, if they're growing under other shrubs or herbs they don't like. All deer are probably different, but mine don't pay much attention to these plants...so except for my roses, that's pretty much what I plant, here :)

Personally, I find roses to be high maintenance plants. Though beautiful when grown well, they are subject to numerous diseases and bugs. And like most perennials/shrubs, yes they will look scruffy if dead flowers and leaves are not removed. (Which then brings you to the "fun" of dealing with the thorns.) This is simply what one accepts with any flowering shrub. Have you considered Hibiscus syriacus, aka Rose of Sharon? If you are unfamiliar with them, it is a specie of winter hardy hibiscus. Without trimming, and depending on the cultivar they can get 6-10feet tall and most of the ones I've seen get about 3 or 4 ft wide. (The one at my folks' place in northern Michigan has never gotten over 7 ft and they have never trimmed it.) They come in whites, pinks, reds, lavenders, "blues" (which really aren't) and bullseyes (white or pink with a red bullseye in the middle). My sis has a beautiful pure white one which also has never gotten over 7ft tall. Neither she nor my folks have found it to be at all bug or disease prone, and hummingbirds like them. (If you'd really like to do this on the cheap, and if you don't mind waiting a few years, you can grow them from seed. The one at my folks' is one I started from seed. It's been a long time, but if memory serves, it reached 4 or 5 ft by its 3rd or 4th year.) Flowers only last a day or two but healthy happy plants produce new flowers most of the summer into fall.

Lrae- I am glad to see you back posting. I was thinking about addressing this section of front yard but it was not until after I had that stacked stone low wall put in early this spring that I could see how this front section would look. Then all summer, I have not been pleased with sections of it because as I had it planted there was not room for all the future daylilies I wanted to put in. So I decided to redo. Much of this sudden move to stasrt making room is because those Daylilies from MJ Meadows will come in September (8 so far) and I want to put them out in front. I also have been doing alot of thinking and planning on extending my bloom season to include August blooms. But I need a place to put any August bloomers before I could get any August bloomers. I plan on doing that back double row in late and extra late.