Over the years I think my planning has devolved :o) I used to plan beds out in full detail. Now, I plan only the largest anchor plants and other key elements, with vague ideas of what the fillers will be. Otherwise my plan for a is more of a theme, which could be a focus on plant type (either a genus I'd like to showcase or plants that need shelter vs. bulletproof plants for more exposed sites), or a focus on colors or textures (or contrasts), vantage point, etc. In practice, my approach involves obtaining at least three times as many plants as I need for a bed. By now, they've been obtained long in advance and live on in containers. The largest plants (the "anchors") are easy because they comprise the plan. They get planted first. Everything else, I need to lay the pots out on top of the bed to actually see how things look with each other, finalize placement, while keeping in mind the overall conception of the bed. If something doesn't look right, try something else. After the bed is completed, I maintain all the extra plants in containers until I'm ready for the next bed. They may become the future anchor plants. Or they can be used to fill in for plants that die. This approach is not well-suited for most, since the container plants do require more care. Truth be told, I love having a collection of container plants (in spite of the extra work), so maybe my "philosophy" is just a rationalization for more aquisitions than are strictly needed. Alex

Thanks for the great information ...patches I'll take a look at your plans...mightyanvil..thanks for taking the time to provide such great advice. This will be our "vacation" home..but it will really be a weekend get away place, that is if we can pull it off. The home will oriented so that the front of the home is north, the back south. We want views to the south and west. I was avoiding a second level because of cost, although considering a loft, but it sounds as though the rule of "cheaper to build up rather than out" applies. It's just DH, myself, and our chocolate lab. Originally we thought everything on one level but are now considering living room, kitchen, mudroom/bath on main level and bed and bath on above. We also considered a basement, as my DH wants the extra storage, but costs vs. it and just a slab foundation..not sure of the differences although there are those that say "might as well put in a basement while you're at it" We're not worried about excavation as we have a friend who'll do the job for us. We love open floor plan because we anticipate small footprint, we want back deck (but plan to build it on later) so outdoor spaces are important. We definitely want a mudroom...area to keep coats, boots, and area to rinse off dog after a run in the mud! We don't really need a garage..again, something we can add later... We live in Western Pa and do want a weather tight home, as we get more cold rainy weather than hot sunny...but want overhangs to keep direct sun out in summer, but still allow sun in winter (passive solar?)... Views to south (back) include woods and stream..views to west include woods and field. Weather hits us from north west...lots of wind from time to time. Why not a screened in porch? I love to sit out but hate the bugs! Ideally, we'd like to contract to get a "shell" built and finish the home ourselves as time/$ allow. Not sure what our options are there... I had to laugh about the home you'd described above with the various levels ..we currently have that set up...and have 5 levels and 4 sets of stairs and it drives me crazy! I can handle one set, but am a bit tired of 4. ;-)

Well not quite a newbie, but IÂll bite. IÂve always been the artistic type and every job IÂve ever had was luckily a creative one. Window displays, photo styling, fashion productionÂthen I got married, had 2 wonderful little munchkins, bought our first (and only so far) house and became a stay at home mom. I didnÂt know an Oak tree from a Rhododendron when we first moved in about 16 years ago. So that gratefully gave me something new to learn. I was closing in on my last bit of patience with Barney the purple dinosaur and the Ninja Turtle dudes. So I learnedÂand learnedÂand learnedÂbecame a Master Gardener , volunteered a lot , was hired as a Hort Manager then left after a few years to start my own design business. In the meantime the kids grew. My oldest was graduating from high school and we still had the old original bathroom that came with the houseÂand IÂm talkin OLD. So I was introduced to the wonderful world of tileÂooooooÂaaaahhhhhh. Then glass tile! There was no stopping me at that point. Started the learning process all over again. Substrates and thinsets, caulk and grout. Finished the glass bathroom, floor to ceiling and in parts ceilingÂI loved it! Then I put it all aside, seeing as the bathroom was finished and all. Then about a year later (last winter) I was hit with some strange medical stuffÂso now IÂm on MS watchÂyech. Perfectly fine so far, but thought that I may want to rethink this garden design stuff, plus working for other people was kinda taking all of the fun out of it. So I jumped right in. I had been on the Design forums here for awhile and eventually found you guys. This is where my mosaic story beginsÂ

I could echo a lot of what everyone wrote. Especially allison's list of things that have remained the same. The only difference is that I'm not as keen on fall colors. I love blue and white in fabrics as well as transferware, yellow (especially for walls), and have been adding more green and red/coral in recent years. My taste has been pretty consistent over the years (I'm in my mid-50s). I started off like shivece, following my parents' style with the comfortable couch, classic chairs, Persian rugs, but ended up going off in a more English country direction. Plus my parents were never interested in antiques, unfortunately. In high school I started buying shelter magazines and tearing out pages which I kept in a binder which I took to college with me lol. I remember swooning over and dreaming about floral Sanderson curtains back then. I've always loved the English country look, well-worn and well-loved full of interesting and meaningful things. Since high school and college, I've pretty much refined and distilled my tastes. I'm much less tempted by decorating "tangents" now that I'm more certain and confident in my tastes. The major change I think has been a change in preference from blowsy, chintz-y florals to more restrained florals and block prints. I have to be careful all the time to remember to vary the size of prints because I'm naturally drawn to smaller prints. In my late 20s, I had first a rental and then a co-op apartment in NYC, where I was born and raised, and a good job and was able to start buying some good furniture to the vintage pieces I'd bought. A few antiques, a good sofa, some nice reproduction pieces from Baker. At the time, Macy's and Altman's had beautiful furniture departments (with antique, new, and reproduction items), and ABC Carpet & Home wasn't trendy and overpriced. Things came to a screeching halt in terms of decorating style a few years later when I married and moved to a farm in rural western Canada. This was before the internet, and the only place to buy furniture that wasn't a six-hour roundtrip was Sears. My husband had bought the farm with a sad little farmhouse just before we met (terrible timing). He had painted everything a cold hospital white (he thought it looked clean), painted the baseboards a cool light grey because he thought it was practical (this was in the early 90s so he was ahead of the curve lol), in the kitchen a horrible white, grey, and mauve-y pink sheet vinyl flooring, and in the rest of the house, cheap grey wall-to-wall carpeting. The only furniture he had was, echoes of czarinalex, a horrible 70s sofa -- orange, mustard, and dark brown acrylic plaid -- and matching swivel/rocking arm chair. The place looked better with my furniture (the sofa got exiled to the basement, and the chair stayed with a sheet over it because it was VERY comfortable and made a great nursing chair for three kids in five years), though I could never get my Persian rug to stop "creeping" in the living room over the wall to wall carpet. We did repaint the walls, but all of the flooring stayed until it wore out and could be replaced; plus we knew we wanted to build a new house and wanted to save our money for that instead of replacing what was, as my grandparents would have said, "serviceable". I did manage to find some gems here and there -- like the large Chinese blue and white fishbowl planters I found at a garage sale (which I keep ferns in). And then the internet arrived, and I was able to read and learn more, including at GardenWeb and blogs (for the love of a home, Ben Pentreath, etc) and find stores and shops online, esp Etsy and Ebay. About nine years ago my parents died and left a NYC apartment full of stuff like oriental rugs and Kindel and Henkel Harris furniture, and a vacation house in the Caribbean with a few things. Through some hard work and creativity, we were able to bring back a number of things, and planned around them for the new house we finished building last year. It's not always easy to hang tight when a favorite all of a sudden becomes trendy. Though living in the back of beyond, sometimes it's helpful when certain things -- like ikat, suzani, block prints, blue and white porcelain/ceramics -- become popular because then they end up at places like Anthropologie, Pottery Barn, and Winners/TJ Maxx where I have access to them : ) . Especially when the trend is truly over and done with, and the markdowns are huge lol. allison, my parents were firm believers in your rule #1 and I've tried to follow it but sometimes it can be hard, especially living here when I'm never sure what I might be able to find/source.