just you: Whether or nor berry plants can be attractive as landscape specimens is pretty much in the eye of the beholder. And their beauty would be largely dependent on how well they were pruned, trained, and cared for. Most berry plants are not plant and forget specimens. In addition, all of the caneberry varieties, blackberries and raspberries included, are perennials that must be renewed and the old canes removed every season to maintain a presentable appearance. A possible exception is a planting of highbush blueberries, whose canes have more permanence and do not require much in the way of external support or training. Then there are the members of the currant and gooseberry family, as well as bush type cherries. There are other possibilities, but most require an individual judgment as to beauty. There will be no shortage of ideas if you begin to think about it. I have what could be called an "espalier" of Triple Crown blackberry plants that are very productive, but a non-French person might just call it a trellis. Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Thank you for all the great ideas and info on how to landscape the way you have it! The retaining wall we just added last fall as the side of the hill was starting to cover a window over there and my dad (a civil engineer) said we needed a retaining wall to keep the side of the hill from becoming structurally unsound. The fence is there because that side of the yard is not dog proof yet and probably won't be until we rent a big dumpster for the yard renovation as the previous owners left a bunch of dangerous (to dogs) junk under those stairs. Because at the time we didn't have the time to clean up the yard, we just put up a fence and have just left it there as we have discovered the rocks and yard in general isn't working out well for the dogs anyways so we would have to redo everything. I don't know what kind of soil we have. I've been planning to stop by the local Extension office to get a soil test kit to find out what the soil is like. There is a bare patch of grass near the deck stairs that has been bare since we purchased the house so I'm wondering if that part of the yard has something wrong with the soil. We have tried seeding that area multiple times with different type seeds and nothing ever worked. You have me very excited about doing the yard now. I can't wait to remove all that rock.

We used large boulders/stones/rocks from around the property to build up a raised bed wall, and I've for my purpose and usage, they're not that great. Not only does my dog rearrange/move around/knock over the rocks looking for lizards, but the stones have gotten super hot in the summer sun/heat, and I've noticed the tomatoes (fruit, not plant) closest to the rocks start to wrinkle as though they need more water, while the tomatoes further away are fine. I'm thinking that perhaps the rocks give off heat that dry out the green skins. Granted, I didn't cage or otherwise support the tomato plants in that bed, so they sprawl close to the rocks/bed edge. I wouldn't have that problem if they were upright. The bed is filled with leaves I'd collected from the drainage along the long driveway and the tomato plants have done great in that bed. I can't speak for any other plants in the same circumstance because I haven't tried any others. I do have smaller rocks bordering flower beds that I then filled in with soil to create a raised bed of maybe an inch. Those aren't bad and don't cause any problems like the larger boulder-rocks and the tomatoes. I haven't had any sinking-rock issues that have been mentioned, and they do well keeping in most roots within the bed. Also, our soil is mostly clay in many areas of the property (5 acres) and thus the big rocks are rough, often pointy, and usually flat-ish. As for rocks as mulch, I think it depends on the rocks, their size, the thickness of layers, and the plants you have. We have a thin layer of gravel along the side of the house, and weeds and birdseed and native plants have grown through.

maybe just mix in a few shovel's worth of sand Sand needs to make up more than half of a planting soil before it starts to affect aeration and drainage. So to produce such effects the existing sand content of a soil has to be augmented with enough additional sand to end up with such a final percentage of sand. Otherwise amending of individual planting holes so that a pocket of different soil texture is created within a larger area can often have adverse effects on recently planted stock due to how movement of water into and out of the amended hole is affected by the involved textural differences. This can result in slowed growth, sometimes even failures. With this phenomenon not being generally noticed due to plants growing away normally once they have rooted beyond the amended hole, into the zone of unmodified soil around the hole that they should have been planted in direct contact with in the first place.