I'd advise coming up with a whole yard plan first. Decide what areas are best for what types of things. You've already identified "border issues" with the neighbors, but there are other space use concerns that you should think about. Perhaps think of your yard as a series of "rooms" with different functions? Also, if you have an overall idea of where you want to go, you can start one step at a time, one area at a time. For example, in my yard, I started out wanting shade and privacy first. Now, two years later I have been able to afford a swing, so now I'm in the process of designing a pleasure garden, which is designed to be looked at while lounging on my garden swing. Eventually I want to add a pergola arbor with vines growing on it. I planned my beds for these three stages. I highly advise you to draw this out on paper first. Not every little detail, but how the various functions of your yard will be spaced and flow together. Too many people just start out without the comprehensive whole in mind and then the end result, while having pretty features, has an overall effect of being a hodge podge. This is a common topic here on this forum, so stick around and keep lurking and learning! Your daughter sounds like me when I was a kid!! My mom put in a stone pool with a fountain in our yard, and I decorated it with little frog statues I made in ceramics class. It was the hit of the neighborhood, all my friends collected rocks to pile around it. I would have LOVED all these fairy yard tchotchkes that they have now. We did not have all these things to buy when I was a kid. We MADE our fairy houses, lol! I credit gardening as a kid with my mom as instilling me a lifelong love of nature. There is a yard in my neighborhood I pass on my morning walks with one of those little fairy fountains with a pretty little flower garden around it, very simple but so lovely. Luckily for you, most butterfly plants are easy as sin to grow.

Linda Yang, who wrote the wonderful "City Gardener's Handbook" works out of the Chelsea Garden Center in NYC. We were lucky enough to speak with her briefly there last year. She does garden design, and I believe her rates are very reasonable. Extremely knowledgable.

Ok, I went in and changed it again. I think it reverts occasionally, as I know I have changed this before. It had gone to “allow people who follow me” to message me, which I know I would not select. Besides, I just sent messages to 2 people I don’t follow as a test, and received an indication that they went through. I changed it to “allow anyone to message me”. Weird. I tried to message you, Kirsten, though, and also see no message button on your profile, though I do see one for peren.all, and sent her a test message. You are trying to help me, and obviously I want you to get through! I can’t see my own profile from anyone else’s perspective to see if now there is a message button to send one to me.

Deer fencing with peeler poles can enclose a fairly large area for hundreds, whereas a conventional solid wood fencing does cost thousands (when a contractor is hired to do it). Either way you don't want to spend a lot of time and money on plantings and then have deer and rabbits etc. help themselves. Also if there is a 6 ft. height limit on conventional fencing deer can jump over that. And rabbits can get underneath. If neighbors (or yourself) would object to the appearance of deer fencing or other effective wildlife excluding installations then I guess you are stuck with being limited to what plants and plantings you can get past them. This, however can be quite limiting. Deer in particular are quite variable and unpredictable in their feeding behavior, with differences in winter conditions from one year to the next playing a role. Plus the bucks use trees to rub off velvet, even where a kind might not be damaged by browsing. I have a conifer in plantings I did for somebody else that lives on country acreage have the bottom branches get mauled one time. I thought it was deer rubbing until I realized it was rabbits* clipping them off, for nesting material is all I could guess. They didn't haul away and use every piece they bit off, that's why I thought it was rubbing instead of biting. *Just now it occurs to me that Aplodontia rufa may have been possible. I haven't seen their tunnels on the property but they do bite branches off of woody plants