Rhubarb! Gotta love rhubarb as a perennial stalk. So little care required. Old compost, sun and water. ;p I grow both german and english chamomile and it makes great tea, very beautiful, small daisy-like flowers. Bee balm (Monarda didyma) attracts wonderful butterflies and hummingbirds, and it is the ingredient that gives Earl Grey tea it's distinctive flavour. Melissa/lemon balm is another great perennial; I use the leaves in salads and for tea. All your mints are great for tea and dessert garnishes -peppermint, spearmint, etc but since they spread like mad you would have to contain them somehow. I have discovered orange mint and chocolate mint, pineapple mint. . .go find them and give them a try! Most of your perennial herbs will do great for spices. It is hard to go wrong with chives and garlic chives. They spread a little more each year. Surprisingly, lavender is edible. There are lots of recipes for it on the web, too many to list here. Good luck; let us know how it goes!

I have no qualms about using rhubarb spray on edibles, if I need to. I always wash them before eating them. And anyway, we eat oxalic acid whenever we eat any green, leafy vegetable (though not in the same quantities as that contained in rhubarb leaves). Ksrogers, you are aware, aren't you, that neem seeds (from which the insecticide is made) are spermicidal? Which can be a good or a bad thing, depending on your plans for the future! Also, pregnant or breast-feeding mothers should avoid neem.

That topic is usually covered in the permaculture forum. They are the ones who know the most about food forests, so you may want to try asking your questions over there.

@callirhoe123 yeah, not necessarily the same 80% and its not a hard and fast rule. I just want the vast majority to be edible and to come back every year. I can tinker around the edges every year with my annual plantings. @gardengal48 (PNW Z8/9) one thing I haven't done yet is to really look at the requirements for each bed yet. My goal is to setup a fairly automatic irrigation system so it looks like I have some work to do making sure each bed has similar water requirements. @beesneedsI love fruit and my current garden has plenty of berries although no currants. They're good perennials and can look reasonably nice in my opinion. I'm going to try and grow the garlics perennially. Hadn't considered rotating the tomatos ... but if I added some sugar snap peas, maybe I could rotate them with the tomatos every other year. Definetly going to look into green onions, watercrests, and some asian greens. Maybe I'll move my spearmint into a container. So many great ideas, haven't even heard of lovage before! Didn't add any cucumbers or squash just because it takes a lot of space for the yield. Going to look more into my annuals and bronze fennel for sure. @floral_uk z.8/9 SW UK thanks for the heads up on black currant ... may remove that one and just stick with the red and white. Will give some consideration for the shading to and the size of the chives bed! May add some green onion or something like that there. I was thinking that I would let some of the chives flower so it would add a bit of color. @vgkg Z-7 Va no HOA here so its all good! I'm working with my builder on how the front yard is going to be graded. They aren't doing anything grass/lawn related. Will get all the groundwork done for the hardscape areas but won't actually finish them until probably a year after completion. I'll build up the beds for soil/compost hopefully shortly after completion because I'd like to get a few things planted this fall before winter. @robert567 Thanks, the visualization is hard. I've been read and see pictures of each but do you know of a program/software that would help with the visualization aspect across different seasons and times of day? @Donald V Zone 6 north Ohio I'm looking into some more dwarf trees and also miniature trees. Don't have a lot of room and I'm wary of the shade they create but I'd love to add more. I may try to see if I can do some container trees in the backyard. Gonna look at adding some green onion. Dill and Arugula as perennials is interesting ... going to look more into that. @jackowskib very cool. I like the trellis in the back. @missb_remodeling great advice. I'm actually going to try to grow the garlic as a perennial ... will see if it works! @beesneeds also suggested rotating tomatos. So I'm going to think about how I could do that. I've been thinking about sorrel too, may try to add some of that for some visual interest.