LOL, "wonderful" is not how I'd describe it, although I will say that the neighbors like it. But then in a landscape of lawns and tightly clipped unhappy yews, anything else looks exotic and fascinating. I mostly garden in front because major traffic behind my house makes it as loud as the Indy 500. The front is only as loud as an average highway, so that's some improvement! ;) In front I have large beds on either side of the lawn where I grow only things that can survive in the vicinity of Norway maples. Everyone on my street has one, they are street trees that you can't cut down. Horrible things. My neighborhood of small cottagy houses was built in the 1930s and the houses are very close together so nothing I could do would ever hide the streetscape--cars, clipped yews, asphalt, concrete, driveways, the neighbors' kids toys, etc. And my neighbor is the town junkman, so his whole yard is basically a junkheap complete with 2 dead cars. But he's a nice guy, we'd never do anything to hurt him. Anyway, despite these constraints, I have after 10 years got lush summer and fall garden of tough-as-nails plants and containers, and I am happy to have a full-sun southside bed where I can grow tomatoes. To give the tiny front yard some structure, I made a semicircle of brick edging that sweeps across the yard in a big slightly assymmetrical arc, to push the eye toward my more attractive southside garden beds and built a little assymmetric brick path to those beds. When money allows I will put up a picket fence, first on the sides and then maybe across the front. My garden would win no design awards, partly because my plantings are constrained by the Norway maple and partly because it's in an unattractive setting. This is my beef with garden mags and books, they always depict gardens at houses whose yards and surroundings would look nice even if no gardening was done. And I sure do envy your wide open sunny spaces, and the more attractive, non-urban cityscape that you have! What I long for is privacy and quiet, the two things you can't get in an urban setting like this. But I do have a nice little front porch that I fill up with plants and wicker chairs in the summer, and I have tomatoes right at the doorstep, and I have bees and flowers so hey, it's OK.

PM2, your garden is so neat and tidy and welcoming! Geez, everyone here is not only more organized on paper than I am, but neater and more organized in the garden! I keep telling myself that since I'm not selling at the market this year I'll have more time to focus on aesthetics. My veggies garden is also growing shadier by the year. Again, because of not selling this year, I should have some more sunny areas to give over to veggies, but I am a flower gardener at heart, so we'll see how that turns out! CMK, honestly, I never ever had a problem with vetch getting away from me. Yes, if I didn't turn it under by the right time, it did grow and really cover that particular bed, but it has never "taken over" the garden or even reseeded much. Every now and then I see a tiny vetch vine or seedling in a nearby bed, but a quick tug takes care of that - unless I want it in that bed and I leave it there on purpose. And that one vine never really does much, so its not really much help anyway. I've never added phosphorus, but I'm really bad at any kind of balancing - I keep meaning to get a soil test, but you can guess how that turned out! So I just keep adding my llama manure, compost, cover crops, and leaves. Campanula, sorry to hear about the horse manure problem. And I hear you and Cactus Joe about never seeming to make enough compost! I have been thinking of getting chickens, but one of my main concerns is that they will take away from the stuff now going into the compost bins, lol! Love the squirrel, PM2! Well, actually, I don't like squirrels (is there a gardener who really does?) but that photo is too funny. Looks like someone got caught with his hand (paw?) in the cookie jar, lol. Dee

Resin: I appreciate your willingness to continue making suggestions, especially in light of my resistance. You have given me good ideas. Now I need to take field trips to W&M and the Botanical Garden in Norfolk. I'd love to find a conifers expert in this geographic area because it is quite different from most of the Southeast. Beng - Yes, there was something about the Aleppo pine that struck me too. You described it perfectly. I'd like to try growing it. I'll look into the Table Mountain pine and Resin's recommendations as well. David, you are right about our climate. We live on Stingray Point, at the end of a peninsula that juts out into the Bay. Being surrounded by a large body of water on three sides is a strong influence on our climate. Temps and humidity are much lower here than 2-3 miles away. The wind blows most of the time, but we are protected from winds out of the north and northeast by a band of trees. Winters are mild with the first freeze in late Nov to early Dec; last frost around mid-March. The Bay has a cooling effect in the spring and early summer - our temps are often 10 degrees lower than the nearest town 3 miles away. Yes, Pamela Harper lives a few miles south of here, as the crow flies. Now anyone reading this thread knows more than you wanted to know about SE VA. I am sorely tempted to ask about cedars (see photo #2 above) that can take a fair amount of wind, usually from the south, that may go on for weeks in the spring and summer. Given what you know about my climate, would Cedrus libani manage? Cedrus atlantica var. glauca? Neither? Other? Tomorrow is Thanksgiving so I give thanks for your patience and your help. I hope you have a peaceful, happy Thanksgiving. I'll be planting trees so I'll be happy! Pam

Labels for the photos of April 9: Photo 1 has 3 large shrubs, front to back: Fat Albert Blue Spruce, Coppertina ninebark, Shadbush of some type. Lower growing, back to front: Amsonia hubrichtii has the feathery leaves and very pale blue flowers; the bright pink flower on a low bush in front of the blue spruce is a rhododendron, I think Independence Day; The bright purple is a Salvia, but I don't remember the type, and the one sort of between the rhodie and the salvia is a Hellebore seedling. Photo 2 has two Rhododendron Olga Mezitt with a combination of green and bright red leaves, one on the far right in front of the dark green arborvitae Techny and one in front of the bright yellow spice bush. The yellow tinted arborvitae between the Rhodie Olga Mezitt is Sunkist. The red, yellow, green shrubby thin between the Sunkist arborvitae and the right side Rhodie is one of the same varieties in the first photos, Amsonia hubrichtii in all its fall glory. The blue-green low groundcover in front of the Sunkist arborvitae is Greystone dianthus AKA pinks (though it is white flowered) and the rambly out-of-control groundcover near the front left is Nepeta AKA catmint. There are a couple of the same Fat Albert blue spruces, one to the left of the yellow spicebush, and one just peaking out to the right of the Sunkist arborvitae. Here are some photos from earlier in the life of this bed when it was in its third growing season. I deliberately left lots of room for the shrubs to grow, so there is quite a bit of mulch showing. Since then I've also added a few plants here and there as I could shoehorn them in. From June 2010 This covers much of the same area as photo 2 above, and though the trellises shown here are still in the same place, they are not nearly as visible now as they were in 2010 when this photo was taken. The Techny and Sunkist arborvitae are smaller as are the Fat Albert blue spruce. The purple flowers are the Nepeta AKA catmint, and the white flowers are the Greystone dianthus AKA pinks. The feathery plant to the right and slightly behind Greystone is the Amsonia hubrichtii in its first season. To the right of that in front of the blue spruce and also in its first season is one of the Rhododendron Olga Mezitt. From June 2010 This is a close up including the blue spruce, Amsonia, and Coppertina ninebark (plus a tiny bit of the rhododendron's leaves at the bottom) from the first photo in my earlier post. And here is a photo looking down the bed to give an idea of how relatively sparse it was in its third season. From June 2010 I spent a bit more money than I often do on the evergreens to get reasonable sized plants, though I did buy them at the autumn sales in 2007, since I wanted medium-slow growing evergreens. Many of the rest of the plants have been added as quart pots, or in the case of the hydrangeas in this bed as, rooted cuttings in 4" pots. I knew that the hydrangeas, clematis and perennials would get larger faster than the evergreens so the smaller plants would catch up. Here's a photo (taken from a higher vantage point so things look a bit shorter than they are) of the whole bed from the end where photo 1 from April 9 was taken. This is one of the quietest times of year in this bed, after many of the spring and summer bloomers have stopped, but before the fall color erupts. There are still a couple of hydrangeas not very visible in this photo, some asters, colchicum bulbs blooming, and the white fluffy seedheads of clematis along with varied foliage texture and color.