I would suggest that this forum could maybe suggest a couple of general principles from which you could develop your own plan, but it's true that you need to be willing to get yourself up a learning curve about both gardening and landscaping to make this work. To tell the truth though, if you don't do the learning curve pretty much all the plants you buy and even professional advice will be a bit if a waste of money, because plants need to be maintained to be of any aesthetic use. The safest thing to do if you don't want to get too involved is just to have all grass!! I think, first, I would put nothing that the dog walkers can destroy by the street. A lot of novices are inclined to cling to the perimeter of the lawn when planting, and that is usually a mistake - by the driveway, plants interfere with getting in and out, and by the street, plants are subject to dog abuse and road salt. Grass is the best plant for those areas. You don't have to have beds anywhere, not even at the house, but if you want some, then I would suggest nice deep beds at the house and maybe another bed within the lawn somewhere. If you outline the bed with a row of flat bricks, it will be easy to mow around, although the edge will always require some maintenance. A key question is always "what do you want to accomplish?" If it is just to fill those beds, ask yourself whether you really want those beds. It is no crime to just seed them over with grass. Some sample objectives might be to block or enhance sightlines, to make the house look connected to the lot, to have flowers to watch and nurture, or just to fit in with the neighbours. Let us know how some of our comments strike you, and we may have more advice. I'd definitely start with a visit to the library for some general gardening and basic landscaping books. Just to clarify, in my mind gardening is the process of caring for the living things that plants are, while landscaping is the whole process of creating the external environment in which the plants will grow - but which may or may not actually include plants! Some landscapes are just gravel and boulders, for instance, or fishponds... KarinL

Thanks! The poster who is growing this is in zone 5 Iowa. He shows pictures of how he protects his tropical plants but not this one, so I wondered how the plant would do in my Zone 6/Sunset 3. We have very hot summers and cold winters. I think I will give the Tetrapanax a try anyway. Also known as the Rice Paper plant? Very tropical looking. It shall grow outside my dining room window!

I have several maples growing around and thought perhaps it was maybe a silver maple. I just was not sure. The leaves are so elongated and have a wrinkles.

Here in the SE United States, sweet gum are a dime a dozen and are subject to fungal diseases which can cause entire sections of the tree to fall apart/collapse. I have read that sweet gum will naturally drop its lower branches. But I have had sweet gum drop off entire ten/fifteen foot sections of the top of their trees onto my driveway (which would have crushed my truck windshield!) Maybe Logan has seen some of that, too, and that is why he is calling it a “trash tree". They are very vigorous growers, often they and lines are some of the first trees to take over old field or open areas. As soon as they are done dropping their fruit, they spend the next 4 weeks dropping tons of pollen structures literally everywhere. They are certainly high maintenance if they are over a driveway, garden, or are that one would want to keep rather clean. But at the forest edge where you or you dog doesn't walk...they'd be fine.