Tuchina- I'm not a professional designer, just a professional dreamer. With your situation--student, limited funds, existing trees, soil, and other constraints--a great deal depends on who you are and what brings you joy. For me, I love research, asking questions, gaining know-how, envisioning possibilities (even financially impossible possibilities). I love being outside in the garden as much as possible, so spring and fall clean up, bed prep, plant transplanting, as well as creating places I like to eat, sit, meditate, and read are important. Working to create these spaces is something that I find entertaining. And I don't mind very slow progress. I purposely set my annual garden goal very low: Is it better this year than last year? And, though it's been slow, I am getting there. I agree that creating a sort of master plan may help you move forward. But it's okay to plan to take the trees down in your master plan, even if you can't do this for a couple of years. That question, of course, may also depend on how long you will live in this house and whether completing your schooling will mean you will be trying to sell. If you plan to work in the same city / town where you are now in school and this will be your home for the next 10 years, then consider a master plan strongly geared toward what you would really love this place to be. On the front end, don't limit your dreaming perspective. It will, after all, potentially be your back yard for a good chunk of your existence. If your time frame is considerably les, then moderate the master plan toward the objective of good stewardship of the yard and home and doing what you decide will give you best value when you need to sell. Once that's out of the way I second Bahia's advice about books, gardens in the neighborhood, gardens and parks in your city, botanical gardens. Go on a picture safari this spring. Take garden tours in your town or region. Lots of notes. Keep a garden journal, especially describing vignettes (little created scenes and settings in a landscape) that, perhaps for some as yet unknown reason, seem to stop your heart. Do the same with garden pictures in magazines and seed catalogs. If you can cut out the pictures, then put them in the garden journal. Later on, you will have to deal with the fact that some of these photos are touched up like runway models, but, nevertheless, if the picture seems to speak to your heart, it's worth beginning to ask yourself "Why?" Now, much of what you capture this way will have nothing to do with your current backyard. I told you I was a professional dreamer! But it is still very much worth learning what it is that you love in the garden, don't you think? Apparently, you found something wonderful about having a fig tree, right? My mom planted one a few years ago and it's a lovely thing ... Back to planning process. You also need to ask yourself a lot of questions about what you want to be able to do in your backyard. You've mentioned that there is no patio -- Would you like one? Do you want a place to drink a cup of coffee in the morning? A table and chairs for friends to sit outside and talk deep thoughts past midnight? A place to groom the pups? You've mentioned a back fence that the neighbor put up but does not maintain. You've put up a second fence ... I think to keep the pups in the yard. Not sure. So this brings up some things you need or want: Enclosure adequate to keep dogs in the yard, and A way to mitigate the ugliness of the neighbor's fence. Now, remember, at this stage you're still just playing. So you can write anything in the whole wide world down as a "I'd love to have ...". Nobody needs to see your list. do you want a fountain or water feature? Do you really wish you had adequate sun for a vegie or herb garden? Do you want to teach your pups dog agility? (Don't laugh! That's what's in my brother's back yard. All these wonderful fun things for his dogs.) Or, maybe you'd just like a nice patio area, maybe some containers of flowers spilling over, and a real lawn dotted with much smaller (younger) ornamental trees and shrubs? Information about what you want and what you need comes first. And I'd even say it comes before you limit the discussion with budget. Trust me, mine is miniscule, but I am working to save up for a major change. I know what I want because I worked on my "master plan". I'm hoping something in this is helpful. If it were me, I'd try to sketch out your main design, I would (and did) get a consultation with a designer (oh, meant to ask, are there any landscape design schools around? You can sometimes get help through a student looking for experience), and then I'd focus on one small area. For me, I'd be planning to nix the trees, so I'd check out the cost. Then that might be all that I could do this year. Or I'd get myself a patio so I could sit sipping a glass of wine, contemplating the possibilities ...

Wow-this post is now almost five years old! I had a blast reading through it!!! Bet you didn't know what you were getting into Rini! I would be considered one of the "city folk" who moved to the country. I don't know if we'd be officially considered "the country" as we're just outside the city on 2.5 acres which is country to us! We moved here for the space, the gorgeous views, a less hectic pace to raise our son, and my love of gardening. When we bought the house we were told that five feet inside our property line was considered a common horse trail. Everyone who lives here gives up five feet within their property line but I've never seen anyone ride their horse on our property ever. There are several dirt roads (the roads are not private) a few miles up from our property that have ranches with 20-40 acres each and we love to take long walks back there. I have to be honest, I didn't know "country etiquette" but used common sense to make my son ask before he fed anyone's horses, goats, etc. I didn't even let him go to the front door because the houses are so far back on the property I didn't want to impose nor did I want to get attacked by a ranch dog! We like to take our dog off leash but trained her sternly the first year to stay on the dirt road and never venture onto someone's property. It helped that she got stung on the nose by someone's electric fence as she now stays on the road. We've had some ranch owners introduce themselves to us and invite my son to feed their animals anytime without asking and allow our dog to frolic with their dogs anytime. Others barely give us a nod. We respect both. We love it here and love our neighbors. When we were cutting down a tree all the neighbors came out of the woodwork and pitched in. Our basement flooded and another neighbor brought over waders and helped us resolve it. In return, I've watched their kids when in a bind, watered their vegetable gardens (these are big gardens compared to the city!) when they went on vacation. I've also learned to make jelly and can from another neighbor. I've had some great neighbors in the city but not like this. It's a breath of fresh "country" air. All of my "city folk" friends love to visit and we're even hosting a wedding here this summer! I feel so grateful to live here and don't get me wrong I still LOVE the city and go every couple of weeks. ;) Charlene

Update on my own roof rat control efforts. I have successfully used snap traps tied to branches in my fig tree, using the plan outlined on this U. of Florida extension website: https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/uw120. A key idea is to activate the traps at dusk and disable them at dawn in order to avoid by-catch of other animals and birds (it also helps here that the traps are in a tree with nothing in it that would attract other animals, like possums). In two nights I have caught 3 rats (including a humungous, mature male and two young females). My neighbors (the new, responsible ones replacing the hoarders who had exacerbated the rat situation), seeing my success, have also started trapping. This is clearly a good time to do so: the rats are apparently desperate right now, with no fruit currently readily available and so desperate that they had, earlier this week, actually begun to eat the bark on my fig tree, girdling one branch completely, having already eaten all the terminal buds and baby figs on the tree. With luck, we can knock these populations back down and have some peace again on this front. Unlike the scare statistics put forth by professional exterminators, roof rat populations are not infinite -- they just seem to be -- and can be controlled (Norway rats, now, are another thing entirely...).

Exciting to have a chunk of land to play with, isn't it?! LPink has given you good info. If you prefer to have the trails covered with chips, you can sometimes get woodchips for free when the power company is trimming lines in your neighborhood. Just stop and ask the trimmers if they will dump in your driveway, and often they will. You will need to move them to the backyard. Or you can get them delivered by the truckload (18 wheeler dump truck). Be sure you have a strong back and a good garden cart or wheelbarrow. We don't chip our trails, but keep them open through a combination of use and mowing with a brush mower once a year. Most of them have herbaceous plants that have sprouted - sedges, grasses and things like wintergreen and partridge berry, but you may or may not get easy care natives sprouting. I wouldn't recommend mowing poison ivy as you can get it from the aerosolized oil (guess how I know . . . ) I use Glyphosate (generic ingredient in Roundup, and therefore cheaper) to spray the leaves; I set the sprayer to the maximum droplet size to reduce herbicide drift and only spray when there's no wind since often there are desirable plants nearby. In areas where I am just getting started removing poison ivy I patrol once a month to get any new sprouts. Where it's well under control, once a year usually is enough to make sure that new plants don't get a foothold. I second lpink's suggestion to get a good brush chipper for now as you open up trails, or rent one a couple of times a year and work through piles you've made. It's the easiest way to get rid of brush. Or you can pile it in the woods off the trail. It will be used by critters as shelter, and will over time break down, but not everyone likes the appearance of brush piles, even when tucked into the woods. A forester will know what you can cut down and will help you plan what has the most value for your goals for this area - recreation, wildlife habitat, firewood, fall color, blooms, winter interest, etc. S/he will also help you plan what to remove and how best to remove it as far as people, tools, etc. In my house, DH uses the chain saw because I am not large/strong enough to manage a full-sized saw, but I use loppers and a tool that is essentially a weed whacker on steroids with a wood saw blade (up to 3") and a soft stem blade (for things like brambles) along with the string trimmer. The brush mower is a tractor pulled one, but push ones with large wheels are also available, though expensive. I don't know if they can be rented. And a word of caution - wear eye protection. Even using loppers, I've had branches snap or bounce and hit me in the face, and when using the weed whacker I also wear logging chaps to protect my legs and a logger's helmet with ear protection since some of the trees are skinny but tall. I also carry my phone, just in case.