For my taste it's not the right direction, but it's your house, so inherently you win :-) For me the sense of enclosure needs to be around the property, not around the house. The house's problem at the moment is that it is not sufficiently exposed due to the eyebrows, and that isn't mitigated by hiding it instead at ground level. Well, there's no question anything that removes those eyebrows will be an improvement, but in terms of landscaping, bulking up the foundation plantings is pretty knee-jerk to me and doesn't change up the game much. You could just take all those plants and make a bed where a fence or wall might go. Make it a living fence, so to speak. To me the house needs freedom from encroachment, not a different form of it. You've got .5 of an acre?? Use it! The pergola at the entrance is like adding a new eyebrow; it closes things in. Now, we all get bees in our bonnets and I remember that was your opening idea. When I get ideas like that I often need to try them before I can let them go, or sometimes, I have reasons for going with them even if they seem wrong to others. Your personal choices will not always be, nor do they need to be, the best design choice. Nandina above asked for a definition of charming. That is an interesting question. I often find charm in things that are not necessarily fabulous design when they express personality and caring within the context of the style of the home. Also, creative thinking. So if it's a "I want it to look like the rest of the neighbourhood," that to me never qualifies - with the rare exception where the norm is the perfect design solution for a house and is done very well. Since you have no foundation, a foundation planting is not the perfect design solution here. Your garden at the moment does not express any personality beyond that of the previous owners or whoever planted those badly placed photinias many years ago. As such, your home looks kind of submissive to the old owners' vision, not like an expression of yours. That, to me, is why it has no charm. If the pergola is something you really want to do, I would suggest a bit of a "go big or go home" approach. Why just do a little thing by the door where neither the door nor the pergola can benefit? Check out the thread linked below, and think about something like a pergola of v1rtu0s1ty's scale, done on the property away from the house. Recrafting the front sidewalk should be, I think, a cornerstone of your design, and with something like an alternating-rectangles approach you could put pergola sections that are offset from one another... or something. Not to design for you, but to get you out of what to me, as I watch you sketch out your ideas, feels like a rut that defines "landscape design" and "charming" in very limited and limiting ways. Not that there's anything wrong with that - it's what the majority of American homeowners do. But they don't come here for input. If you come to a landscape design forum for feedback, rut-busting is part of the program :-) KarinL Here is a link that might be useful: Virtuosity's pergola and yard

I would like to grow my plant on a couple of straight bamboo poles that are at least 6' tall. My plant seems to like to grow straight up very quickly and it's pretty much out of room to do that on it's current support. How do you grow your lambii, on bamboo hoops as well? Hopefully there is some new growth from this one in the spring. The new leaves are beautiful but so far I have only seen a couple on my plant. With all the flowers I have seen from this one so far I am more than willing to wait patiently for new leaves. :) Mike

Southerners know how to live! When DS and I visited Charleston(then went on to Savannah) last summer, in the evenings we would drive to one of the historic neighborhoods, park the car, and walk. We would catch a glimpse inside a few of these beautiful domiciles with their wallpapered lr's, chandeliered dr's, and foyers with magnificent and unimagineable millwork~the word *grand* doesn't describe such beauty! Patricia's home looks to be such a home. Next week I'll be taking my 3 dd's to Savannah so they can also experience this charming historic city.. I can only hope one of them will take that evening stroll with me

Part of the reason for turning our attention to New England is that the transatlantic journey to the UK is already a difficult one for my mother. Last year we went, and she suffered with a partially diagnosed back problem that actually compelled her to have back surgery the month following our return home. She was in significant pain for much of the trip, but somehow managed to "keep calm and carry on" for the most part. She's over that physical problem now, but realizes that she moves much more slowly than ever before and it's just increasingly hard to get out and do/see as she once was able to. However, England maintains its "magical hold" over us both, so I can't say we've ruled out the trip that we've been planning ... just wanting to weigh all of our options, and it does seem that New England holds a number of good ones! As for what we like to do ... Well, we mostly just enjoy the experience of being in new places and seeing how others go about their lives. We are people watchers, and enjoy meeting locals. We like historic places (although we don't tend to spend a lot of time in museums), places that are quaint, charming, and beautiful. We like to dine out -- nothing terribly fancy, though -- and have a fondness for afternoon tea. We like ice cream. We like interesting, quirky shops. We like encountering interesting, quirky people. We like seeing things that are very much unlike things we would see at home. I watched a few YouTube videos last night on New England, one in which a man talked about HATING to drive in that part of the country. He said that particularly in the summer and fall, roads are horribly congested, but that some of it can be avoided if one gets off the main drags and heads for the backroads. Is that easily done? Re Martha's Vineyard -- I've read that it costs around $140 or so take a car over on the ferry. Does that sound right? Does that include the return trip? Renting a car on MV is prohibitively expensive. I have never spent any time in Boston (although I'll be flying through there in a few days). I've looked into flying into other places such as Hartford and New Haven, and it looks like BOS is going to be our only option for non-stop flights on AA.