It is well worth it if you don't mind putting in some hard work the first season or two. Cut down all the undesirable underbrush, scrubby trees and out of control vines you decide you don't want and remove the debris. You get pretty handy with a handsaw and a machete. Then I recommend putting down a layer of cardboard and cover with some thick mulch. This will keep much of those weeds from coming back without harming the roots of the trees you want to keep. Cardboard's free so don't be stingy with it and it pays to make sure each piece overlaps its neighbors so there isn't any light getting through to the ground and weeds underneath. You can get mulch from various city or county facilities if you look around. Or use grass clippings or something along those lines like esh recommended. You can skip the cardboard and mulch alone will probably help alot but I still have found using cardboard to be more effective at killing the more persistent weeds with strong underground roots. Spray Roundup or paint brush killer on anything that tries to poke through your efforts and be diligent about it every week or two during the growing season. This only takes me 20 minutes or so to breeze over my acre and spray what few things the cardboard/mulch didn't kill completely. Things should be MUCH improved the following year and require minimal maintenance. If it's a large area don't overwhelm yourself. You can just focus on small portions at a time, say a 10 x 10 area for 2-3 weeks until you've gotten the weeds fairly suppressed there and then do the same thing to another portion. If I try to do a big area all at once I get tired just thinking about it and then I'm not as inclined to finish the job or do it as thoroughly. Get one portion under control then move on to another, all the while checking the areas you've previously done every couple of weeks or so for anything trying to poke through and spray that sucker good. At least this is the method that works for me. Your backyard sounds nice!! I love natural settings. Danielle

You should mark out where you want stuff first. If there are a lot of weeds, getting rid of them is the first step. For 20'x30' I recommend seeding -- but only if you can really get rid of the weeds. I did an area that size in my backyard last year. It was full of weedy grasses, weed seed from a prior year's negleect. The easiest thing for me was to cover it all with newspaper and then add 1-2" topsoil. I seeded into the new dirt, watered the seed in well so the birds didn't eat it all, and was rewarded with bazillions of flowers and lots of grass bunches. I chose purple needlegrass as the main grass, and the area is next to my blue grama lawn, so some blue grama has come to join in the party. This year is year #2 and *everything* reseeded. I will have to be much more careful with the globe gilia as it produced so much seed areas are solid green with its seedlings. I've linked to larner seeds and there are other good sources but with them I get excellent germination and a great selection of both native grasses and wildflowers (I am addicted to the peppermind candy flower, though sadly my slugs are too, so even though it is a perennial I keep buying seed). I would recommend buying mostly grass seeds and a handful of wildflowers you would want. Mix them all with a pound of corn meal and then use a spreader to cover your area. I did it by hand last year and got too dense bunches of lots of things. Annuals it didn't matter but I had to move some wallflower perennials because all 10 plants are growing on top of each other! Let us know what you do! Here is a link that might be useful: Larner Seeds

The two branches are cordons from which new shoots will form. You could train the cordons across a wire and let them produce new canes. Each cane will produce more canes. Grape clusters don't grow on old wood. So this year, when the vine goes dormant, look for strong new canes, Choose 2-4 good ones. Get rid of the rest. The good canes should have many buds. Starting at the base, count 5-8 buds and prune off the rest. Within each dormant bud resides one cluster and a new cane. This process repeats over and over as the years pass. If your vine is becoming a monster, there is no reason that you can't summer prune. Just make sure you leave enough on each cane so you will have fruit next year. Go to you tube. Lots of videos. Search Pruning Concord Grapevines.

Those are lovely steps in the picture, Gardengal, and great for that site where someone is obviously going to spend a good bit of money. But let's be realistic about their maintenance. Every week during growing season, the steps not only must be mowed, but every inch of edge must be trimmed. That is a lot of trimming! .... worth it for the luxury artistic effect sought by the moneyed, but not too practical for the average working Joe. And what doesn't show it that there IS a wall, at least at the far side because some structure is retaining all the soil of the stairs. We can't see how the steps terminate at the near side because it is concealed by a hedge. It could be another wall, or the steps could terminate into the grade. Stairs without walls give a different artistic effect and it might be desirable sometimes, in certain situations. But as a rule, if the stairs are located in lawn, it adds maintenance and looks cheaper. Unless the steps are totally on top of the grade (which they almost never are) then there is the constant problem of soil falling and washing over the edges of the steps. I concede that if plantings other than lawn flank the steps, having no cheekwalls is easier to tolerate. There is still trimming, but it is not as bad or as unsightly as it is with grass. I'm not submitting this picture as any example of a great set of steps, but one that illustrates the problems I'm talking about. Obviously, it's someone's unmanicured yard, but people can easily imagine the lawn mowed and how the line trimming would be necessary all around each step, at every mowing. What a pain! And soil spills over the edge of each step. People who live with this configuration tire of it readily.