It is always fun to pick up where a crazy lady gardener left off! I suspect future owners of my house will refer to me as that :-) One thing you might be forgetting is that all plants are basically green most of the time, so stuff going together is really not that big an big issue. One exception is probably forsythia with pink flowering cherries, but then, I hate forsythia so I may not be seeing that correctly. But on the whole, in the type of project you have in mind, I would feel quite free to go with whatever plants you like. Another thing, a single forsythia can get pretty big so unless you like that garish yellow colour a lot, three of them might be overkill. One is permitted to throw plants in the compost even if they are still alive. Your kids will be safest if you simply teach them not to eat anything from your flower garden, although I have to admit that I have never been able to bring myself to grow monkshood, even though my kids knew the rule (my son could say Euphorbia when he could barely talk because he knew not to touch his face if he'd touched the euphorbias "dis a euphorbia?"). But the list of poisonous plants is astonishingly long and limiting, and if you also worry about what's poisonous to cats you can't grow anything at all, especially not lilies. Do try to beat your weeds before you plant. It's way easier. Karin L

We have a long narrow side yard at our house, 37 ft long by just 5.5 ft wide. We're turning it into a secret garden for our two children. They are well past the toddler stage (son now 10 1/2, daughter 12 1/2). Our son wants a little waterfall with a river and a pond, our daughter wants a bed for vegetables. They both want fragrant plants, and a quiet place to read and play games. They are so many great things you can do for a children's secret garden for even young children-- gosh a vegetable bed including edible flowers, thornless roses, a pond that might encourage dragonflies or with fish, a sand box area to dig in and play with toy cars and trucks of course. I even saw a long narrow water rill created for toddlers to float boats down in one kids gardens book. A small bubbling/gurgling water feature down at ground level could be fun they can put their hands into, a teepee beans or sunflower house to climb and hide under, a wooden playhouse or a treehouse down on the ground level. Or maybe even a small fabric tent or teepee to sleep outside in with dad when the summer nights are warm. There are some really cool childrens garden books out there with many many ideas. You could dig soem of the grass for a two kind of moss hopscotch thing, okay so maybe they are a little young for hopscotching! How about planting flowers that would encourage butterflies, releasing ladybugs to the garden to eat the rose aphids. What about growing large pumpkins or spaghetti squash, and cherry tomatoes and carrots? You could hang a hammock low to the ground that you can read to them in. We even found a toad in our front garden and we moved him to the side yard secret garden, its damper and shadier so we hope he'll stay in the new location. You've got the space for a chicken coop or for ducks (a pond would be great for them). I've read that chickens or ducks are great pets for kids. Here is a link to my picture trail showing pics of the secret garden we're working on. Good luck and I hope to see pics in progress of the your toddlers' garden soon! careytearose Here is a link that might be useful: look in the Landscaping Projects 2007 album

KarinL, you've given me tons to think about. Here are some thoughts in response to parts of it: Your questions about how I want to move through and be in the space are well taken. I'd add another consideration, though, which is how the house speaks to the street. I'd like it to say: "this bit is my yard, but please do come in! Because of the walk, the porch steps, and the deep front porch, the way in for visitors - and the way I'll walk in and where I'll put down groceries - are very well defined. Here are a couple of pics that show more of the front yard: Because of the way the holly tree (which I love) sits on the west side of the front yard, there's a real imbalance between very strong and rectilinear visuals on the west side and open and scraggly boundaries on the east, the more so with with fence coming down on the east side. I'm cool with the openness on the east and the more closed, divided feeling on the west, because I love my east-side neighbors and not so much the west-side one! That said, I do feel like there's a need for some visual interest and definition at the property line on the east side - something just a little sheltering to reach out from the side of the house towards the sidewalk and embrace visitors without overwhelming them. Which leads to your next point about... Planting along boundaries: The caveat against the beginner's mistake makes sense to me, because of course in interiors the comparable mistake is to line up everything absolutely straight against the walls. In this case, though, having lived in the house only a short time, I can clearly see the need for some definition along the property line but don't yet fully know how I'll want to move in the space. Since whatever goes along the side and back of the yard will be visible over whatever eventually goes in the middle, is there any harm in planting shrubs near the outside edges of the space and making decisions about the middle in a future season? On the hedgy stuff in front of the porch, I do have some useful info, and I think you're right that most of it has to go. There are several different things going on there. The low thing out in front that's trimmed like a hedge is a group of azaleas! Now, I like azaleas, but these flower in the worst possible shade of magenta for all the other color that's going on here. The largest thing is a red-tip photinia and most unfortunately it's falling victim to that leaf spot disease. Poking up between the azaleas and the photinia are a couple of very happy rhododendrons, which could stay and become part of a new grouping. I'd love to look out over something pretty when I sit on the front porch, but I don't need something that screens the porch as much as the current ailing photinia does.

Somebody with a big enough lawn could easily pay $200 per month during the mowing season just to have that kept mowed and edged, with blowing of associated debris off of adjacent paved surfaces afterward and subsequent hauling and disposal of clippings off site. For instance when I was paying a lawn service to do this on my previous 0.6 acre property that was somewhat less than about half lawn at that point the charge per visit got up to $65 before I went back to mowing it myself several years ago. The mowing service provider was on site maybe as much as 15 minutes each time. With of course disposal of my share of the accumulated load adding a little more time off site. Otherwise a couple longtime friends providing expert gardening (in the one case) and landscape (in the second) services primarily to the Seattle area market I think are currently figuring their time charges at about $45 per hour. The first party does not even drive, typically shows up on a bicycle and does maintenance gardening with hand tools (except when a project really does require a truck, in which case a second party is brought in to help with the work). Their continually growing roster of repeat customers keeps them very busy during the spring in particular.