When you say dig up and amend the soil, is there a problem with the site soil or are you talking about double digging? Double digging has fallen out of favor. If you're on facebook, there's a group for the garden professor's blog with a lot of great info and input from hort researchers.

As far as the planning goes, I always recommend a local landscape designer. It's a good way to help determine not just the layout but priorities, and how best to approach a phased build.

Soil is heavy clay. I wanted to till in compost to improve the soil and make a better foundation for the garden. Thanks for the landscape designer idea! That's not in the budget, unfortunately, and I want something a little different than the standard 'border garden' that I see in most yards. Going back through my notes and books and starting there!

Yes, those are great tips! Thanks! And if anyone has a 'sample layout' pic, I'd love to see it. I'm envisioning one straight path (to barn) and one meandering path that meets up with the straight path, and between the two, a small outdoor seating area. Flower beds bordering. I have my big list of flowers/plants, maybe a couple of small (6 - 8') trees to give visual interest...any other ideas? It's a BIG space but I'll build it a bit at a time so that it isn't overwhelming.

Based on the plot's size and shape, it doesn't look like you're considering that the house might appear better with a goal of integrating it into its surroundings. This garden seems like an add-on that doesn't care at all about the house and its landscaping. For starters, some small tree forms diagonally off the corners of the house would help its appearance without specifically negating a cottage garden.

I'm not trying to illustrate a planted garden ... just a bed concept ...

If you can't/won't hire a designer (not an expensive investment, btw), then plan out your new cottage garden to scale on paper before you even stick a shovel in the ground!! You don't need to worry about any plant placement at this time but you do want to plot out where the pathways will be, the seating and firepit area and how the two structures connect. And how do you plan to edge or define this area? A fence? Cottage style gardens are usually well defined spaces - that is the structure that is necessary to keep them from looking like just a overgrown jumble of plants.

Drawing things out on paper first will give you a better sense of proportion and how things fit and work together before you actually need to delineate things on the actual ground.

btw, I know of no trees other than a few Japanese maples that will not easily exceed 6-8' in time. That is a shrub size....and a smaller scaled shrub at that. With that large blank expanse of facade as a backdrop, you need something with a much greater height to balance things out. And maybe serve as some sort of focal point.

ETA: Yard's mock up above shows exactly the benefit of larger tree-form plants and how they pull everything together and balance things out.

Thank you, Yardvaark! I actually do have a front-of-house plan that I didn't include here, but absolutely I recognize that just jutting it out from the house as-is wouldn't look cohesive with the rest of the house. I've drawn out a plan for those front beds. Border beds are easier, thankfully! Gardengal48, great ideas about the planning. I didn't have much of a plan for the edging. Tree-wise, I'd thought about Kilmarnock willows, dwarf crabapples, maybe red chokeberries, all top out at around 8 ft. Some a bit smaller. But yes, I should incorporate some shrubs too. Garden plan up there looks great. Something to think about for sure. Guess I should pull out my pen and paper and get to work! :) Thanks again!

You really do need some taller trees!! There are a decent number of perennials and many roses (and a few ornamental grasses) that will exceed that 6-8' height and the ones you have listed will just be swallowed by all the other growth. Shoot for something in the 20-25' range. It will take a while for them to achieve that height but you need some defined verticallity.

(btw, the willow is just a grafted shrub. And the aronia/chokeberry is definitely a shrub!)

That does make sense. I have my "master list" of trees categorized by height and so I've got lots to choose from. I love larger trees too. I could go ahead and plant them this year, before I get the garden started (SO many improvements/projects to just the house itself and front beds that it will be 2020 before I can really get going on the side garden). Then they'll have a few years to get going as I build the garden up around them. Great idea!

Figure out routes for getting around the house from front to back as part of your planning. There will be times when you have muddy shoes or are moving mulch etc that you will want a path that skirts the house without having to swing wide around a large fenced garden. It might just be on the other side of the house.

IME you want some distance between a fire pit and the building or plants or overhanging trees. So decide if this is the best placement for both the garden and the fire pit.

Structure is important, whether is is hardscape or structural plants.

Although they may look random (and some definitely are), successful cottage style gardens have a distinct design behind them, beginning with a sense of enclosure. I'd suggest you research the topic thoroughly while making your plans. One of the better texts on the subject is English Cottage Gardening for American Gardeners, by Margaret Hensel (available on Amazon). I own this book myself and found it invaluable for when I am asked to design a cottage garden.

Thanks! I'll check out that book. And good idea about fire pit/basic garden structure. That's been my biggest issue, because I know what plants I'd like...I know about the 'rule of 3' grouping, about 3 season color, about paying just as much attention to the leaves/greenery as you do the flowers themselves...but I struggle with structure. My design is a bit like a child flinging paint. I like the idea of picking the basic structural elements and working outward. A lot to think about!

Another factor is your view lines. You contemplate a garden that will be very pretty, and a fair amount of work. Will it be in view of your most-used seating areas? from your shady seating for hot days? Is there potentially a better place to put it so it can be seen from the house? Might you want to instead place cottage-garden-style beds where they wrap around your verandas a bit more? Is the area between house and barn the spot where you will see it the most? (My personal experience is that spouse and I like to take work breaks at a table in the shade of my patio umbrella where I can gaze upon my "big garden" that is so much work, and maybe write some project notes in my gardening notebook while i sit. And the big garden is visible from all the windows along the back of my house. ) (I always start a garden in grass by laying 6 inches or more of shredded leaves on top of the grass in the fall, then plant in spring. We have a shredder. You may be able to simply start with unshredded tree leaves, or chop up with lawn mower. dunno. Kill the grass and enrich the soil.) I envy you, starting out, with lots of space!

We've actually considered making the long front porch wrap around to connect here and building the beds out from there. We move in 2 weeks, but so far, I've really been focused on the long front bed that runs the whole length of the house front and curves around to the side. I planted about 50 perennials after I cleared the bed (mostly) of violets, vinca, and mint. I think I'm going to have to sit on it for a year. It will be at least 2 months before we finish our house modifications, so I don't want to make any decisions just yet (one mod: a gravel driveway around the side of the house, running out to the barns, right through this space). We also spent a ton of money on those perennials and I can't afford to add any more this year. One thing I am doing is saving all of the carpet we've ripped out from upstairs. I'm cutting it into strips and laying it in the front field for a huge vegetable/flower cutting garden next year. It's easily seen from the house and from my upstairs office window, and it's definitely needed. So we'll see what happens!

I would strongly recommend NOT using carpet in the garden. The PO of our house did, and the most disgusting thing I have ever done in 40 years of working in the garden is removing sodden, mildewed, grubby carpeting with weeds growing in it. Twenty years later I am still finding tufts of carpet mixed into the soil. Instead use corrugated cardboard from the grocery store, appliance store, cycle store, etc. and cover it with shredded leaves or arborists’ shredded branches (in my area if they are working nearby they will drop it off in the yard for free) or municipal compost, all inexpensive or free sources of mulch. In the fall you can pick up bags of leaves from the curb as well Or an 18 wheeler of mulch isn’t super expensive. Anything that will ultimately degrade is a far better mulch or path than carpet.

That definitely makes sense! I'm not planning on leaving it...just putting it down for the summer, pulling it up in the fall once weeds/etc. dead and tilling in manure and soil...carpet will go in the trash! :)