My blog leans more toward trees or tree care. But it looks like some landscape and shrub content is on the horizon this year. M. D. Vaden of Oregon Tree Blog This is going to be a surge of gardening year at our home. Now that the landscape design has been tweaked a bit. Still have a few small trees to add like Hinoki cypress, after some tree pruning in a couple of weeks. Yesterday was my first attempt at trying to get some apple tree blossoms. Need to work on that some. I like apple tree blossoms even more than cherry tree blossoms. Here is a link that might be useful: M. D. Vaden of Oregon Tree and Forest Bllog

A bit harsh? rutgers1 is most likely 100% correct, but I never pull any punches and am blunt. Seeing that this is a DIY (do it yourself) forum and the actual nature of the thread, - "Have you inspired anyone to join you in your lawn obsession?" many of gbig2's comments, I find very pretentious, aloof and pompous, which prompted my reply. "What makes you think you can landscape your own house? You can't!" "why would you nickel and dime the landscaping for it by trying to do it yourself?" "Pick up the phone and call an expert, PLEASE!" -Maybe they like doing it themselves? Maybe they are proud of what they did! "I'm sorry but going to home depot and spending $400 on a couple plants and trees is not landscaping! " -Maybe they LIKE what they bought at Home Depot? Maybe they are proud of what they bought! "My neighbor who didn't take the above advice, [****hiring an expert, I assume?****] put in two front beds himself (not raised beds, he decided to put in slightly below grade beds, lol) -Instead of now laughing at him so pompously, maybe some neighborly hands-on help would have been nice? "it looks so bad that some day I may have to pull the weeds myself." -This statement is not condescending? "it's a mistake (that I almost made years ago) to try to do it yourself, hire a professional" - This statement is not supercilious? "I went from not knowing what KBG was or TTTF was [snip] to now, completely renovating with KBG" - So I must ask ... did you DIY or hire a professional?

I was surprised to see 100 house plans between 500 and 1000 sq ft on that link. Scott, I have never had the opportunity to think about building a small house from scratch, as it were, but I have had lots of fun making the small homes I have lived in more user friendly. My advice is to think like a boat builder. Look for nooks and crannies in which to build storage. Think about the space above a staircase. Can you squeeze a closet, cabinet, or bookcase above the place where the staircase ends? My last house had a big cedar closet there that you entered by opening a bookcase in the living room. You needed a stepstool to get in, but it extended into the attic at the top. It was worth having to duck your head when you got to the bottom of the basement stairs. Another place we found room in that house was in a 10 x 10 room off the kitchen. It was once a back porch, and had a vaulted ceiling. It was too small for a dining room, since a staircase for 6 steps had to be worked into the design. On the opposite wall, smack in the middle, was the back door. On the end where the ceiling was highest, I designed a platform only 45" deep, going the 10 ft length of the room. It was level with the kitchen floor on one end, a butted right up to the molding of the back door at the other end. We had enough room on that platform to put a stack of drawers and small counter, two 3 ft wide 12 inch deep pantry cabinets, and a blind-corner utility cabinet in an "L" at the end. A railing separated this section of the room from the next section, which was the stairway going down the 30-some inches to the floor of the old porch. Bench seating under the windows there was storage space, and we even installed doors so you could get under the platform of the pantry galley for more storage. My builder laid indoor-outdoor carpet there to crawl on. Yes, we had a basement, but this storage was just off the kitchen, so worked well for roasters, soup pots and other big kitchen stuff. Our rain gear, boots, and dog supplies went into the benches, which were right near the back door. When I designed the kitchen remodel, the first two contractors I showed my diagrams to showed no interest. One told me that there was not enough space to build a platform for the pantry and room to walk in front of the cabinets. The other did not even do a bid. The third guy showed interest, took out his tape rule, and said that it would work. That, my small homers, is how I met Jim, my contractor for every project ever since. When putting the kitchen together, he added two knick-knack shelves in places that I had not considered. He worked around room contours that made for strange cabinet sizes, but since we had a local cabinet company, they could make the odd sizes at no extra cost. Just like Eatrealfood did in her kitchen design, you just work around things and be grateful when you get half a cabinet's worth of usable storage!

I think that my biggest inspiration for my garden was a neighbor growing up. She had beautiful mixed borders with perennials, flowering trees, and shrubs. However, I was terrified of her since she didn't like kids and would yell at me for even stopping on the sidewalk to look, so I looked from a distance or as we drove by or walking slowly as a came home from school. I also have a friend that I met when I was 10 whose parents also had mixed borders with roses and crabapples and grapes and perennials. I loved their gardens as well. My grandfather, who we visited in the summer, had a rural garden of old-fashioned cottage garden plants - Hydrangeas, poppies, peonies, iris, sweet peas, violas, asparagus, quince, roses, and an apple tree. There were many more, but those are what remain in my memory, and a few remain in my garden from divisions taken after they had both died and the house was up for sale. My folks took us to the Holden Arboretum regularly and we often detoured through a cemetery with beautiful plantings, so much of what I saw trained my eye, even though I grew up in a house of non-gardeners. Now I get a lot of my inspiration from gardens I visit (I love the Open Days sponsored by the Garden Conservancy and other open garden fundraisers), on line from blogs and here on GW, and from eye candy books from the library.