What I've read here would indicate it's not likely you would get ripe olives in our growing season. Figs are a different story. You might like to hang out on the Fig forum for some info on them. They need as much heat and sun as you can give them. My best so far are Laterula and Desert King, I haven't had Brown Turkey and Stella long enough to tell, as they are still rather small trees. They have little figs on them now but I had ripe Laterula and Desert King figs several weeks ago. I don't know if the cherries you have are on special dwarfing rootstocks, but most seemingly dwarf or semi-dwarf cherry trees get very large indeed. They may dwarf the apple trees or encroach on them. Semi-dwarf apples actually grow the size of standard trees in other parts of the country. If you want to grow vegetables you will need a good sunny spot so save a little ground without trees. Since you already have quite a few trees, you might want to look into shade plants. Pulmonaria are some of my favorites, very undemanding, bloom in spring, great foliage plants the rest of the time, and they self-seed so you get more plants. Looking at some gardening books sounds like a great starting point. You might also walk around some established neighborhoods and get a feel for mature size of plants and trees you are considering, as well as seeing some good designs to imitate. Most commonly available grapes are seedless ones perhaps not well suited for wine. Grape varieties for wine that will grow well here is something you would have to research.

I will list for you the trees/shrubs that are thriving in our heavy red clay and maybe you'll get some ideas from the list. Our rainfall is about the same as yours--I'd say 36" is roughly our average, although we vary widely from year to year. In the last decade, our lowest rainfall has been 18" and our highest 51" (this year). Pretty much anything you plant might need irrigation during dry spells the first three years, but after that they ought to be able to handle almost anything except the most severe drought conditions. Red Mountain Cedar (Juniperus virginiana)--Because it is so invasive, I hate to recommend this one but it is a tough son of a gun that can handle almost anything the weather throws at it in southcentral OK. I am a little concerned that a severe ice storm might bring down branches from this tree, but ist hasn't happened here (we are so far south that we have escaped the damaging ice storms that have hit OK in the 2000s). Maybe someone who lives closer to you geographically can tell you if the recent ice storms have destroyed cedar trees. I also wouldn't plant cedar within 100' of a house or other building if you're in an area prone to wildfires/grassfires because their wood can explode and send burning sap through the air and it can land on buildings and ignite them. We took out all the cedars within 100' of our buildings for this reason Still, cedar is the toughest tree around and if left unpruned the limbs go all the way down to the ground so it is a great windblock/privacy screen. Most have small blue berries. Evergreen. Will reach a mature height of 30-40' and a spread of up to 20', but it will take them a while to max out. They can handle full sun, part shade and dappled shade. This probably is the most widely adapted tree in most of our state. Hollies in general would work, and really large ones that get almost tree size would block a lot of wind. Nellie R. Stevens is a great one, so is Burford Holly and there are many other hollies. They grow well here in clay that's only been slightly improved with a little compost. Most have berries, but with some varieties you have to have male and female plants to get berries. Many are Evergreen. Here in southern OK (and I am assuming in other parts of OK as well) we have native Possumhaw hollies (Ilex decidua) that are deciduous if you aren't looking strictly for evergreens for a year-round privacy scree. There are some improved cultivars of Possumhaw Holly available commercially. Yaupon Holly (Ilex vomitoria) also handles clay very well and can handle clay soil, and grows in anything from dappled shade to full sun. Both American Elm (Ulmus americanus) and Cedar Elm (Ulmus crassifolia) are native here in our red clay soils. They provide lovely fall color and can grow in full sun to part shade. Our woods are full of several kinds of oak that are well-adapted to heavy clay soils and to our hot summers, including post oaks and red oaks. We also have a lot of native bur oaks (Quercus macrocarpa) and they are gorgeous with their huge leaves and acorns. They get really, really, really large though so if I were using them on a property the size of yours, I'd take care to plant them pretty far from the house and other buildings and well away from power lines. It will take them many years, but they'll eventually attain a height in excess of 60 to 80 feet, so you don't want to put them too close to a building because eventually they'll loom large over those buildings and dominate the landscape visually. Our 8-year-old burr oaks that we transplanted from the woodland to the yard when they were about a foot tall are now about 18' tall, so they are not tremendously fast-growing. Another deciduous tree that grows wild here in heavy clay soil and which survives on nothing but rainfall is the Persimmon. These grow pretty fast and have lovely golden-orange color in the fall. They produce smallish persimmons, which seem to be one of the coyote's favorite (or, at least, most readily available) foods. Rusty Blackhaw Viburnum (Viburnum rufidulum) is a lovely native small tree/large shrub. It is deciduous, has lovely creamy white and aromatic flowers in spring, and attractive berries in fall. The fall color is pretty good most years. All the ones on our property are understory trees in our mixed oak-hickory woodlands, so they tend to only get 12-15' tall or maybe 18' tall if they have some full sun part of the day. In more open areas, they can get up to 30' tall eventually. Chaste Tree (Vitex agnus-castus) is a great shrubby tree that has lovely violet-blue flowers in the summer. It will spread out about as wide as it is tall although some people prune them up more into a tree form. There is a pink-flowered form but I've never seen it here. Native plums like Chickasaw plum or Mexican plum (Prunus mexicanus) are very tough and can handle clay quite well. Their blooms are lovely and scent the air in early spring. Some years you even get small plums from them that you can use to make wild plum jam, but often they bloom too early and a late freeze takes out the flowers/fruit. They tend to get about 15' tall in general, but there are a few very mature ones in our part of the county that are 30' to 35' tall. Any poplar you plant will be very prone to breaking when there are severe windstorms or ice storms. So would willows. They grow fast, but that also means they decline and break quickly too. My personal opinion is that planting bamboo would be a big mistake. Bamboo is highly, highly, highly invasive. If you plant it near a property line and it creeps into the neighbor's yard, they can hold you financially responsible for the costs incurred in removing it, and it is difficult to remove. There are many ornamental grasses that could serve as a mid-height privacy screen interplanted with or adjacent to taller deciduous trees and most ornamental grasses tolerate clay very well (unless you choose one that is native to sandy soil). The Oklahoma Forestry Dept. sells trees to property owners in bundles in the late winter or early spring for conservation use, windbreaks, wildlife forage/habitat, etc. I'll see if I can find and link that portion of their website. Southern Wax Myrtle (Myrica cerifera) is another possibility but I do think it would be more likely to suffer ice storm damage as far north as you are. Even when we have only a couple of inches of snow here, I run outside with the rake and knock the ice and snow off the limbs because they start bending under the weight of the snow and I don't want them to break. They are growing just fine here in unimproved clay. Evergreen and has gorgeous red and cream-colored berries. Dwarf Wax Myrtle (Myrtle pusilla) might be a great understory planting to accompany taller trees. They top out at about six feet in height but otherwise are very similar to standard Wax Myrtle. We have many other native trees and shrubs in our woodland that thrive in clay soil and are ableto survive only on natural rainfall, including honey locust, black locust, native pecan, Texas ash, blackjack oak, chokecherry, Oklahoma redbud and American beautyberry. Some of those probably will be on the forestry list when I find it and link it and you might research them to see if any of them appeal to you. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: OK Forestry Dept. Tree Seedlings

Do you have any inspiration pictures? This is the time to do hardscaping so you should try to decide. You have a back porch, will it hold the whole family? Will there be lawn in the back yard? Where will cars park? Is there a driveway? I think you should leave an open area ( no hardscape and no trees) closer to the street for more parking space in the future. You may not have an RV now but who knows what the future holds? I do mean to have the area planted, just with things easier to remove if you ever decide. I think you should get some graph paper and draw your plot in a to scale drawing. Then you could try too place plants and other elements by drawing onto the paper. Some people make their mock up with their computer. I don't know what software they use. Even if you do not think you are creative, just doodle at first. When you have something post it.

Of course there's a logical way to go about fitting things in. But let's start with better familiarization with the property. It would be helpful if you show a few scenes in order to give us a feel for what is there. In the following photo, I'm suggesting 4 positions to place the camera (red circles marked A,B,C,D) and red lines which indicate the span of the view desired. If you would take and post these pictures I think it would be a helpful starting point. The pictures should be a medium size ... not too small. Essentially, it looks like you wish to have a few nut trees, an orchard and a large garden. The garden should be large enough to add all those small things you list separately. There is probably not a cleared area large enough to contain the orchard as a single unit so you might end up with 2 or three smaller, separate orchards. (We don't know what can still be cleared.) The nut trees could be farthest from the house, the orchard a little closer, the garden closer yet and the herb garden probably very near the house. You haven't mentioned wanting any space for growing flowers, but if you discover this joy, you might at some point want to enlarge the vegetable garden with another "wing" for growing them.