What type of trees are they, aspen? This will influence whether you are even likely to be able to create garden beds since root competition from established trees can make establishing new plants difficult. It may be most practical to plant in the shaded area in front of the trees shown in the first photo on either side of the arch.

Is your soil wet or dry, acid or alkaline, sandy or clay or loam?

I would tend to look to your local woodland plants for inspiration. For instance, hay scented ferns make a nice groundcover in my area under trees in dappled sun, and if you don’t want grass there, the ferns will substitute. Or I also like the open feel you currently have of low forbs that can be walked on or through with trees above.

I would be sure to research any Pinterest ideas since not all the plants will be hardy enough for your growing zone.

It would be more helpful if you could draw a "floorplan" of your outdoor area. The lack of fencing makes it hard to know where the garden ends.

I would only try lawn in areas that are easy to mow. I would not enjoy struggling to get between trees.

It is good to look at pictures to imagine what you want it to look like.

If you go to the Perennials Forum users there can show you many pictures.

Just turn the entire area under the trees into a shade garden. Establish logical paths to move through it, and everything else will be beds. I wouldn't want to deal with grass in a shade garden.

I can't tell which house is yours and which your neighbors. Do you want to screen anything from view? The garbage, for starters?

Here is a sketch, to the best of my abilities to better define the space. Hope this helps.

@laceyvail Im aiming at just doing beds because the space is so large that it would take too much money to spread soil (there’s too much roots etc) and adequately plant the entire square footage. You’ll see in the sketch that there is an established path set. We haven’t had any problems mowing the grass between the trees, so Im okay with this but thanks for your suggestion.

@kitasei It’s our shop, not the neighbors house, better defined in this sketch. The bags are all leaves, from our spring rake (yes we also did a fall clean up, but thanks to the 4 weeping willows we have extreme amounts of leaves to clean multiple times a year!) Would you have any suggestions for shielding the shop from view?

Your drawing didn’t appear.....

As lacceyvail says, just planting the entire area under the trees would be better than beds. Our backyard has a small lawn in the most open area and then everything else is planted, with a path network through it. Leaves and pine needles are left on the ground to ‘compost in place’. Woodland plants thrive on the leaf duff and it helps to suppress weeds. In our first year here (2000) we cleaned out leaves etc. from under the trees so we could see what was already growing under there. We spent the rest of the summer weeding endlessly! Never again.....! In the area under white pines here, there is groundcover in much of the area, with perennials and some shrubs planted in it for variety. Where deciduous trees are the main canopy, the ground level plantings are more varied as the light levels mean more options are available. Self-seeders help cover a lot of ground quickly and relatively inexpensively.

I noticed what appears to be a high chain link fence in the first picture... Do you need to keep out wildlife of any sort? Is the property located in an area where fire risk is something that needs to be considered?

@woodyoak we haven’t had any problems with weeds, this is the second year with grass.

Our entire yard is unfenced. Wildlife is not a concern.

Just looking for suggestions on garden bed placement areas and size for hostas, ferns etc or other suggestions on sprucing the area up, but looks like everyone just wants to commment on the grass in the trees, lol.

Used a laptop 35 mins ago to upload the sketch and it’s appearing on my end on both mobile and the computer, not sure why it isn’t showing. Haven’t found this houzz site to be user friendly so far! Thanks for your suggestions.

Another attempt

I can see the sketch in both places, C Osm. You didn’t respond to my suggestion of location for beds.

As I said above, the tree roots will influence whether you can create beds in the area under the trees. If the trees are aspens, they have lots of shallow roots that connect all the trees and send up sprouts when injured by digging, so practically, I would create a band of beds in the shady patch just in front of the trees as shown in your first photo, between the tree and the house, but closer to the trees. I like the open grassed look under the trees and likely wouldn’t change that at all. I don’t think adding spots of beds will improve the look under the trees, so would want pretty much all one groundcover there, whether it is grass or ferns or whatever.

Wowwww @woodyoak absolutely amazing!! This will come in handy, what a stunning wealth of information you have created on your website! Thanks so much for sharing.

@woodyoak do you have anywhere on your site that explains how to establish beds to begin planting hostas, etc alongside our path ?

For a couple of beds on the north side, I did the ‘lasagna’ thing by removing sod, turning it upside down (so the grass was in contact with the soil), covered it with fallen leaves and then covered it with layers of wet newspaper, then added another layer of chopped fallen leaves. I left it for the winter and planted into it the following spring. On the south side, I just removed grass and planted directly into the soil. The oak leaves that fell there in the fall were either left in place whole or chopped with the mulching leaf blower. Under the pines on the west side, there was no grass and I just planted straight into the soil and accumulated fallen pine needles. In the ‘wet corner’ (SW) we had to remove pachysandra and ajuga, and then just planted into what soil was there. A few years later we tore down an old garden shed and had a new one built. There was a compost heap behind the shed and we dumped it all into the wet corner bed. To get the plants established, in the first five years or so we used soaker hoses to water everything.

P.S. I had to run off to meet someone earlier so kept my response very brief. I just got home again... A few additional comments:

- what you're seeing in my blog pages that I linked above is the result of almost 20 years of working a bit at a time - I didn't have a specific plan drafted; I just had a general vision of what I wanted it to look like. We bought this house/property in spring 1999, did an extensive renovation and addition to the house over the summer and moved in in the fall. Other than laying down some sod, gardening didn't start until spring 2000. In the backyard 'woodland' we started under the pines to see what we could do; when that seemed to work reasonably well, we moved on the next year to the wet corner area and the start of the south plantings under the oak. The next year we extended that further towards the house and also realized the bed under the pines needed to be extended towards the house to balance the planting we were doing on the south side, so we started with the grass removal for that in the fall - and on and on it went with one thing leading to another.... (I used to have year-by-year pictures on Picturetrail but I stopped using it/paying for it so they are now archived and not available on-line or I could show you the changes the garden went through....)

So don't try to do everything at once unless you have a lot of bodies to do the work! If you don't plan on staying in the current house for long, concentrate on creating a nicely shaped lawn area near the house and woodland-edge beds along the edge of the woods. Continue to grow the grass - if it survives but shade and leaf-fall would likely doom it quickly! In which case, leave the leaves on the ground and focus on keeping the paths clear and creating a pleasant network of paths, plus adding some shade-tolerant shrubs and other easy-care plantings.

If you plan to stay there for many years, take your time to imagine what it can be like ideally for you and then work one section at a time and see where it leads.

Have fun with it!

I have a hard time believing that the grass under the trees will persist over the long haul. A day will come where you need to fight nature less. It can be the place for woodsy shade plants and groundcover. Some or all of it could be a mulch bed, but groundcover is better. At the buildings, there would/could be foundation planting beds. As you create islands, remember that they don't look their best with trees too close to the edge. Also, avoid loops. Use long fluid curves.