I think it's great that you have identified the kind of gardener you are. I found the sentence "I am a plantsman, not a gardener" in a magazine about ten years ago and it was my gateway to the same understanding. No drifts for me either! I have a quantity of plants that no other person would try to cram onto a property the size of mine, and individual plants that by themselves would occupy the whole space if I did not (a) control them by pruning or dividing or staking or tying, and (b) cull the occasional individual that tries to grow to its full size. My conclusion about shrubs in particular is that you have to have a plan for the airspace that they can occupy and keep them to it, otherwise they will just take all they can get. But trees too... you decide which major branches will be allowed to grow, and which will go. You do need to take light direction into account, as a certain amount of leaning for the light will occur among deciduous shrubs. So my answer to your question would be to plant as you wish at this moment. Ten or twenty years from now, you or a future home owner may make different decisions, but you can only make decisions for today; you can't control what people do down the line anyway, so why try to plant for the needs of twenty years hence? To leave a reasonable amount of space is only rational, but to strive for leaving the perfect amount of space is to sacrifice your current needs for future needs that you cannot even guarantee will play out. The next owner may clearcut the whole lot, or cull a specimen they dislike anyhow. In addition, you will be able to move these specimens around for a few years anyway. By the way, the aerial view is not the only one you should consider. You have no doubt done so, but think about view corridors and window blockages and such too. KarinL

Last year with a serious drought 28.4". Sedums thrived unwatered across our land. So did all of the native small shrubs by their look this spring. This year we've has 12" to the beginning of April and an additional four inches through yesterday afternoon (and more last night). This year's rainfall is two inches below normal so the fifteen inch hydrologic deficit from last year is only slowly being replenished. A friend from uptown New Orleans called last night. They had rain two days ago and the Gretna/Algiers gauge(across the river from him. Audubon didn't report.) was 8.64" for that six hour storm. (The gauges are important and news down there because they determin the rate the pumps are worked in different sectors of the city.) Yes, catsroses, you ARE going to make money with the installations and with their maintenance. Because people have forgotten that they can reason things out themselves. But it will keep gardens going and that will interest gardeners of the future (not just their yardmen).

It's a nice looking bed, but you have it pretty well filled up with shrubs. Unless you keep them pruned back pretty drastically, I'd imagine the bed is rather full when the Ligustrum and Euonymous leaf out. The Junipers at the edge of the patio really prevent you from doing much around them, again, unless you prune them back quite a bit. I'd take a drastic approach, and I'm assuming you have yard space. I'd move the Junipers, and all but one of the Privet. Leave the Burning Bushes, because they're at the back. Now you have an open bed, with a few backbone shrubs to play off of. You could replace the Junipers with low-growing carpet Junipers to soften some of the patio edge, and use small grasses and Hostas between them for contrast. As you work back into the bed, increase the height of the plants, and use the Euonymous as a backdrop, by planning contrasting fall colors in front of their dramatic red fall foliage. A couple of moderate height columnar grasses, like Calamagrostis x acutiflora ('Karl Foerster,' 'Overdam' or 'Avalanche'(the second 2 are variegated)). They'll bloom in summer, but hold their inflorescenses through the fall, and really stand out against the Burning Bushes. Once you open the area up by removing a lot of the shrubs, you'll have many more options.

I'd use iron sulfate before I'd use aluminum sulfate, but neither will have as much effect as sulfur. I may be wrong, but I think the main reason that iron sulfate is faster acting than sulfur is because one of the effects of high pH is iron deficiency. The iron sulfate doesn't bring the pH down nearly as much, but unless you've got pH like David52 and I have, the iron sulfate will provide some readily available iron right away (around here, the pH is high enough that the iron in iron sulfate is not available). Something that can very quickly (and very temporarily) lower the pH are to add a quart or twoo of vinegar to a 5 gallon bucket of water and use that to water. If there are pool supply places nearby, you can probably buy some granules that can be added to the water to drop the pH in pools. I think most of these have sulfur in them and turn the water into either sulfurous or sulfuric acid. If you get really desperate, you can use muriatic acid (I think it's something like 15-20% HCL). If you use muriatic acid, make sure to add the acid to the water and not the other way around. These approaches are fast, but very temporary. With your weather and native soil, a temporary fix may be enough, since that'll give time for the soil to move toward the norm for your area. Karen--A number of things contribute to making soils either acidic or alkaline. Weather is actually a big factor. Areas that get a lot of rainfall tend to have more acidic soil and areas that are arid tend to have alkaline soil. This is mostly due to the minerals and elements that get washed away with the water (somewhat related to this, arid areas often suffer from problems with salt buildup). In recent years, the acidifying effect of rain has become even more pronounced where acid rain is an issue. There are other factors, as well. For example, there are areas in Colorado and Utah that have acidic soil despite being arid. The reason is that the soil content is mostly crushed granite. I would assume that southern Ohio gets enough water, so your alkalinity must be due to the makeup of the soil itself.