I've never been on this forum before, think 90% went to landscaping school!! Way I see it is the front door looks too small, It seems like a side of house door. So the area around it needs to be changed. The walkway would be great going from front door to the driveway on this side of that tree far enough so the roots of tree don't buckle the new sidewalk. Then between sidewalk & house you have a nice area to plant some shade plants near tree & others closer to house. Anyone parking in front of house can walk up the driveway to the new walk which would have a lovely curve to it. I think a nice birdbath (or fountain if you insist- most get turned off about as fast as they are installed as pump costs money to run, birds mess them up etc) Get a nice ornamental small tree later so that goes towards left of pic & off of the curve of walk a number of feet(between left tree & walk but towards street) You can go with a couple of plants with stands by front door until you get walk in & deceide what bushes to keep up by house. With 4 little ones you aren't going to get it done overnite. Walkway is most important & getting area around tree with some plants, hostas if you can grow them, impatiens for quick color, don't know where you live so don't know if Boston Fern by front door or some other large draping plants would soften & improve look. I can see the front stoop being covered with brick with half circle steps down to walkway but then you would need brick along path to driveway or you could make the 1/2 circle steps of imprinted cement or with whatever pattern you wish. I'm in So. Ca. & weather & all plays a big part in what you do in most of the states. You want to make that door not stick out but part of landscape. 2 plants on 1 side & 1 on shorter pillar. Could be cut logs, pillars taken down from Colonial style house, clay tiles. Lady just painted 1 on Garden Junk forum, I imagine they come in different sizes & you could paint them black or white etc. I think round would be good as you want the plants to be focal point. A cut up telephone pole 3 heights, 15 in, 20 in & 25 in. would add interest. Just be sure the poles can't tip over easy & hurt the kids. Oh, I don't think I will ever dare come back here when they get through trashing my "crazy' ideas!! I just have always looked for ways to get what I want without spending a fortune!! Good Luck!

Might as well bump it up. Myself, I find myself clearly in group 3 with tendencies toward group 4. So far no conventions, but I've joined AHS and participate in the First Look Auctions. I also lusted after a particular hosta which I finally WON AT AUCTION this year, soon to be delivered. My count is high for a #3, like somewhere around 324 by the time this year's orders are delivered....and that does not count the ones with multiples. Like 8 plantaginea species just because she is the beginning of my addiction. When I read the Seven Stages to my DH just now, not admitting where I myself was on this continuum, he said, "You are involved in a CULT." Well, hmmmm, I wonder if that is so. He was smiling when he said it. Incidentally, I container hosta garden. Even so, I spread mulch over my entire new area which is 25' x 100' and there my pots are arrayed at my whim. One week they are arranged by the nursery they came from. Next week they are arranged by the family. Then as the season progresses, they get moved by which are doing the best, look the prettiest, or I cluster all the ones in bloom near one another to make for easy pollenation. Or so I hope. Also, I'm learning who created the hosta I'm fondest of, and I see what others came from his/her hybridization program. At first I avoided blues, and giants, thinking I had to restrict myself....but that has gone out the window and now it is just those hosta with a lot of white that I am hesitant to try. This year, 2013, will be my second year of addiction. Somehow it grabbed me at the beginning of last spring, and I barely caught my breath from March through November. Now let's see what happens this year.

As I age, my hobbies change. Some on here will remember how Cactus & Succulent crazy I was for years... pretty much gone. I moved in 2004 and my microclimate changed drastically. So I had to change what I grew. Orchids became more prevelant, which devolved into mostly Oncidiums and Cymbidium orchids! The microclimate involved many more epiphytics, AND there was a YARD involved so more in ground gardening and less container gardening. In 2007 my career changed paths (totally UNEXPECTED paths) and I've been learning a whole new industry since then. May of this year saw me promoted into a Manager position, in a one person office, so it is All Me. (That sucks up way more of my time than I like.) Read (less than I used to) Compost Have four cats Have had my Class M California license for more than 25 years and have been more actively riding my trike (Brothers of the Third Wheel have been featured in several Major publications this year) Got sucked into Farm games on a well known social network Photograph my beautiful plants, at a near professional level Lost a dear pet suddenly and needed a new hobby to keep my hands busy, and my lap full... so I started designing and crafting jewelry. (Yep, that's pretty much where I've been.) You can see it here http://www.artfire.com/users/The_Clockwork_Boudoir Not to mention a recent introduction to Steampunk... Just what I need, a new hobby! I've developed a more sophisticated musical palette thanks to my 24 yo son, and will be attending a Black Keys concert on my 50th birthday... Wondering if I'm in crisis territory?

Resuming the question by backing up with some arguments from the books: My conclusion of Nitschkes historical analyses could be checked by reading the first pages of each following chapters regarding the stereotypes. In fact, this is not much a conclusion, rather a summary. Because the book is already organized according to the chronological evolution is this an easy thing to do. The most important parts are likely the first and the last chapter. The first garden type, the Heian gardens, imitated and copied some/most nature feature and scenes. The 5th garden type, the last in the book, consists a great deal of the projection of mans mind to a piece of land, floor or roof we call our garden. Nitschke termed the results as mindscapes. If you want to read some sentences in the book, try these ones (and likely others, but these ones Ive looked up yesterday within half an hour): [p106]"The Heian garden imitates the outer forms of nature between the selective landscape of natural features. It seems to me that the Muromachi garden takes a step further: it seeks to imitate the inner form of nature and thereby fathom the secret laws of its proportions and rhythms, energy and movement. Its means a abstract compositions of naturally-accuring materials". [207]"The 5th new garden prototype, which emerged at the start of the 20th century, was initially dominated by carved natural rocks; these were later joined by synthetic materials. This prototype no longer starts from existing models in nature, but is better understood as an intellectual projection onto nature. Its gardens are thus no longer land-scapes but mind-scapes. [233]"Kenzo Tange explains: "We like the carved rock, because it reflects the will of the carver. Neither the natural rocks nor the way they had been placed (in the traditional garden) reflected the slightest trace of human personality. They simply lay quietly where they were, disturbing nothing and giving no hint of a human urge to create something beautiful". Shortly before his death in 1989, the famous sculptor Isamu Naguchi stated in a interview:"The garden is made from a collaboration with nature. Mans hands are hidden by time and by many effects of nature, moss and so forth, so you are hidden. I dont want to be hidden. I want to show, therefore, I am modern. Im not a traditional Ueki-ya, tree trimmer". Ive tried to relate Nitschkes "Japanese Gardens" to Slawsons "Secret teaching in the art of Japanese gardens" in the evolution framework discussed here, and found ground for my thought especially in the parts where Slawson explained the shift of what he termed "feature-oriented design" to "quality-oriented design", started at page 70. He did this with the term Fuzei, which was hard to grasp in the beginning, because I was tied up in my objective-subjective dualism (read below further). Edzard mentioned in his previous comments that Fuzei refers to the objective organization of the site, i.e. the atmosphere of the site "as is". To me this is hard to accept, because a site has firstly to "appear" to me and I must be "open" for him, otherwise it has no meaning for me. Things (or animals or plants) gain meaning to us because they appear to us and only if or because we are open and sensitive to them. I must "add" my subjectivity to feel the atmosphere of the site. Furthermore, these "feeling tones" (a term used by Slawson in discussing Fuzei on pages 71-72,137-138) will getting stronger when we starts giving a thing a NAME of its own. This looks to me as the reason and explanation of the superiority of the Japanese in rock setting as well. They started giving the rocks their own names, and are thereby getting more sensitive to its characters and qualities. If you want to read some sentences in the book, try these ones (and likely others, but these ones Ive looked up yesterday within half an hour): [70]"This is important (the shift to quality-oriented landscape, red), for by paying more attention to these perceptual qualitiessize, shape, texture, configurationof materials, the 15th century manual roots the garden not so much in the natural world as in functioning of human senses that perceive it". [71]"Fuzei occurs 59 times in the Illustrations, and only 4 times in Sakuteiki" [71]"With the Illustrations, we witness the beginning of an awareness of the extend to which such feelings could be generated within the human heart through the pathways of the human senses". [71]"Perhaps this explains the almost schizophrenic tendency in the West to regard the "objective" imitation of nature and the "subjective"expression of emotive qualities in art as mutually exclusive, and to value the first one and then the other in the pendulum swing of history......... There is no reason to conclude that these two instincts are mutually exclusive. In art, as with human life, there is much more to be gained from regarding them as inseperable aspects of a whole". Feeling-tones are also described in pages 136-141. "The Japanese had developed a vocabulary of feeling-tones in conjunction with the art of literatureterms like aware (pathos), okashi (a diverting or pleasing qualilty), yugen (a profound, haunting beauty), or sabi (resigned solitude), but this vocabulary is unfortunately not reflected in the Illustrations". On page138 Slawson shows "only" 3 feeling-tones in English words. My question was/is: are you agree with the evolution summary, and if so, are you happy with it ? My own answer now is: I dont care, because Ive overlooked the significance of gardens as part of nature. Urban gardens are definitely not part of (wild) nature, but are just extentions of our houses. What we do there is just breezing some "fresh" air, sitting, playing, looking. Yes, we grow a tree or two, but I can barely call those trees as a part of nature. This discussion has opened my eyes that these gardens have less to do with nature itself. They can be NATURE-INSPIRED in the upper layer of the design. They can beeither IMAGES of MINDS or SYMBOLS of NATURE or something in between.. I do like both the IMAGES of a nature-inspired garden and art-inspired garden as well, as long as they match my TASTE. So, garden designing is going nowhere in term of "good, objective design" (the 5 gardeners), because "good" seems to be replaced by "taste". And we are now allowed to have our own individual tastes.