This is text from a website about art which is what I think landscape design is. However we get to use beautiful plants as our paint. I always thought I was the artistic type, just couldn't find my medium. LOL In reference to Woody's photos This is about negative space. Apart from the main subject of focus or point of interest, what you do not capture is as important as what you do capture. Would this statement indicate height of Plants to create negative space? And then the plants around, leading up to the arbor? For ex. in photos of the links you provided, the arbor is the focal point by its height, and in some seasons by the green and height, and flowers at another time? Elemental Contrast: The main subject or the point of interest is contrasted against the negative space in your frame. Negative space, by it�s very presence, highlights the positive space and can create interesting effects. Again shown by the height, as well as the hard structure, with negative space around? Balance in Composition: is absolutely critical. Balance is the key element which tells the viewer�s eye that the photo is pleasing. And what balances positive space is negative space. Hence, including it as a core part of your composition is vital. Balance of specimens or hardscapes, trees, even your house. And if you wanted to spend hours and hours (at least for me) looking at balance throughout the seasons. It doesn't have to be the same balance every season and that balance could be created by colors as well. Clutter-free Composition: is vital for the viewer�s eye. When there is only a single point of interest in a photograph, the eye can easily find the resting place. Clutter-free is important to me in the front yard (and I think this is what my boyfriend is worried about). Depth in Artistic Appeal: Having a well balanced photograph with the right amount & placement of negative space adds depth in the artistic appeal of it. This is a bit of what I'm struggling with as I want varying heights throughout landscape but not the messy look. I'm hoping to intersperse ornamental grasses into the mix to accomplish this. I have a few photos of other yards I would love to show, but I copied from the internet into Word.doc and I don't have the links anymore. I tried to import to iphoto to no avail. Tried to save them in different formats to import. Nothing worked. Its great to chat on this forum with everyone as I don't know anyone else interested in this project. I'm thoroughly enjoying it. And thanks for all your responses.

Hi all -- Permit me to report here some results of a morning get-together with the head engineer at Capital, Joey Kitabayashi, and a service tech (whose name I'm blanking on). It seems my simmer can definitely be turned lower. Not necessarily at the fine-tuning screw level behind the knobs, but upstream, at the black funnel-shaped air intake valve located underneath the drip pans. A clue to this is that the blue flames coming out of the ports on my burners were "lifting" - they didn't erupt from the burner at the metal, but there was a air gap between ignited flame and metal burner. This was made to go away by adjusting the air mix and *then* the flame was adjustable downward with the little screwdriver. And guess what: Mr Joey gave me an adorable little long-shank 3/32" slotted screwdriver branded with the Capital logo that fits. How cool is that? ;) (Sorry, I know this is trivial, but I just love that little thing. It's snuggled in a drawer next to my range. It works, it's easy to adjust the flame (they watched me do it), and ... I dont have to trudge out to a sixth hardware store looking for this thing ... except that I do have to go back to the third to return the driver I bought that doesn't work. :( ) Now, Mr Joey and I chatted for many long hours, principally about customer relations. He's working on getting that adorable to screwdriver to anyone who wants it. Mind you, I'm not Capital and I'm not promising, but it's my understanding that they're definitely sitting up straight and about to launch into Remedial Customer Relations 101. In their defense, among many other interesting things I learned today, is that Capital has received very, very few calls complaining about the simmer. There have been a lot of complaints on here about it. But they aren't getting translated to the folks who need to know and can do something about it. As a personal matter, I am culpable, doubly in some sense because I happen to live near their factory. They are endearingly desperate to be introduced to problems in their backyard so that they can at least get things perfect here before tackling, say, Maryland. It's a long plane trip to New York, and they've indeed been undertaking service calls that far away. So that's another interesting point: Capital is a smaller endeavor than some may realize. I tried to make the point to Joey that the size of the operation is measured to we consumers in some sense in terms of reputation of product quality, not, say, gross profit or units produced. But from their point of view, it's just a bunch of guys in a warehouse south of here. They don't have a sales army of distributors to relay customer information to them; they need to hear it from you, personally, on the phone. Joey answers customer service calls sometimes. On to the substantive issue, the simmer. It is Joey's hope, belief and contention that they can actually adjust all the people's machines with "simmering problems" downward. However, what that means practically, is another matter. Not in terms of doing the adjustment, but what will constitute a good-enough simmer. He told me and I believe him, that he's committed to trying to work on each and every simmer problem presented to them on a case by case basis. More out there may be remedied in the same manner as my machine's. There may be different solutions as well. I got quite an earful about the myriad parameters affecting gas flow and ultimately temperature. While that machine may be essentially simple, the focusing of its flame is not. So - back to my service call. They managed to get the temperature way lower and then we set on to "simmer" a panful of canned baked beans. They appeared to simmer lowly very nicely for a while. Most definitely better than had been; possibly enough low that I might not be complaining. With time however the glop did continue to heat up and eventually started to scorch. So I know that this was all very interesting to Mr Joey. In some sense the jury's still a little bit out about whether my machine, then, has achieved a "true simmer"; the definition of that elusive quality has yet to be nailed down. But at least I believe in the course of my conversation with Joey we were quite agreed that a practical definition is most important, that is one relevant to a home cook, involving home-cooked items and a homecook's needs (e.g., all-day simmering without constant monitoring, no scorching, thick and thin, etc). He is, BTW, extremely desirous of developing real-life, practical feedback about all of this. He recognizes (now) that boiling water is all well and good for a factory/lab test but that translating results to a more practical milieu matters. I think this is an important step for us CC owners (personally). What else?...drat; forgot to ask about the cooling fan. Other interesting tidbits: the convection necessarily draws air around through the middle of the oven's interior cavity, hence the temperature there is necessarily, always lower. They're going to undertake some more, practical, experiments on this in the factory. Oh yes -- the bottom line is that, as I understand it, Capital believes it quite possible that each and every simmer problem out there can be addressed and improved. Whether it will be improvable enough is still a little unclear. So in the meantime, they are indeed in the process of developing a simmering plate for their machine. How that will be distributed, cost, etc, is entirely unknown as of now. However, most important was also this information about the actual engineering. The paradigm, if you will, of how the burner varies from low flame to high, is not like, say, turning a light bulb dimmer from low to high. It's more like, um, well -- don't know if this is a good analogy for all, but more like on my stereo's receiver there's a large "volume" dial, and then a smaller "loudness" dial. The loudness kicks in its particular sound spectrum at the lower end of volume; after a certain volume the 'volume' knob takes over. With these burners it seems there's a main, basically a cylinder like it sounds to me, a car's cylinder. This adjusts the flow of gas on a large scale and affects the blast furnace end of things, the 23K BTU part. Then at the bottom end of things is this adjustment screw that controls the low-end simmering part. It's not particularly related to the gross adjustment. And hence, it is, theoretically, possible to "have it all", a burner that ranges from low-end simmer to blast furnace. Still in discussion, however, is just how low a simmer capability needs to be from a practical, home-cook's standpoint. And I'm going to have to go in a second here, possibly before conveying all. But let me just say that this bit, the discussion of what is low-enough practically, is something that was made clear to me Capital is very willing to hear from its customers (and potential customers) regarding. They have a website, with contact information on it. I urge sundry to contact them (even if I myself am utterly chicken about doing so). gotta run, sorry .... more later if it occurs.

I am coming to the party late and skimming replies so this might be repeat. I caught Biondanonima's recommendation to skip the weed barrier/landscape fabric and "second" that this is good advice. As she says, weed roots grow through it, locking it to the ground but doing nothing to stop weeds. While the "surprise" plants might be welcome when they come, they might not be the basis of a good design unless they are in sufficient quantity. It would be hard to predict how you might use unknown things. Maybe you can get these plants identified and quantified and then someone might be able to calculate how they might be used. Keep in mind that too many different things, randomly organized, can make the yard end up looking like a junk repository. If we were to "dissect" what architectural element (floor, ceiling, wall, furniture, etc.) would be the most important in creating a nice finished product out of this slope, it would be a FLOOR. With that element alone you could have a pleasant, serene looking space. (Some walls and ceiling -- tree canopy, retaining wall and fence -- are already in place.) While a floor ALONE might not create the highest glory, it is the beginning. I suggest you begin with a groundcover that is low (so as not to feel oppressive to the adjacent spaces) and does well for your area. If it was evergreen that would be a "plus" but whether you can have it that way depends on where you are. In addition to a groundcover, other plants will help add more interest, but it's hard to make much in the way of specific recommendations because we cannot see a cohesive total scene or a "to scale" plan of the area. I suggest you draw a simple plan showing the existing major elements. To show a complete scene, place the camera at a central position opposing the scene, and then take a series of slightly overlapping photos that pan the scene from one end to the other. In addition to a groundcover, it's likely that most other plants will be placed at the back of the scene, not the foreground. There is no point to screening the back of the scene, which presumably you will make look good, with taller plants placed at the front. Other plants, if they are single, must be large enough if they are to captivate an audience. If they are not large enough on their own, they must be in groups that are large enough. Having small, unrelated plants does not make a nice scene. Unless you are creating a "wall" (hedge) as a backdrop, avoid placing plants in lines. It usually doesn't look good. Instead, place them in masses/blocks.

Mad_Gallica - thank you SOOO much for identifying the problem! It makes sense that the Your Topics feed is the problem, since I stopped being able to access the second page about the same time that transition happened. In all the discussions of Houzz problems with GW, I'd never seen that mentioned on this forum. I really appreciate you bringing that to my attention with a relatively manageable fix, even if that means renegotiating around Houzz's clumsy front end to find the Roses and Antique Roses forum. Emily, I appreciate the alternate links and I was able to access the second pages from those links as well, just not when using the Your Topics page that is supposed to be our starting place to filter out the other discussions. It's ironic that the primary innovation that was supposed to make GW more user-friendly has made it unusable for me from that format (I wonder why others using Your Topics on this forum don't seem to have the same problem). Technical support clearly didn't have information about this bug, at least not sufficiently to resolve the problem or even to indicate that this problem legitimately existed apart from my browser, and they were unable to suggest a strategy to test the assumption or a workaround as you did in your posts. We appreciate your problem solving with us on this forum, but the contrast between you and technical support/programmers for Houzz is one of the reasons we've had the kinds of reactions that Jeri mentions above. You have shown genuine signs of caring and trying to resolve some of the problems, but that has not been the case for most of the rest of the Houzz personnel. Even with your input, the things that are problems don't seem to change even this long after they've been unworkable. If it's possible for you to pass along these bugs to the programmers in ways that could get results it would be welcome, but we just don't have much confidence that you'll be able to get changes accomplished. Thanks for helping though and for being a positive presence in a sea of frustration. Cynthia