We are trying to plan out our landscape for next year and are really not coming up with a whole lot. What have you guys done around your house? Did you put anything in specifically for your critters? Any pictures? Any favorite websites?
What kind of soil do you have? How much maintenance do you want to do on it? Do you have to worry about dog/child safety?
You could pick some themes and roughly stick to them. Just for some ideas:
Native plant landscape
Japanese garden
Edible landscape
Color themes
All white gardens are called moon gardens. You only plant white flowers and foliage plants with silver/white on their leaves. They look pretty flippin incredible in the moonlight, I plan to make a garden corner like this some day.
Any color combo really, with other accents. Blue/pink, yellow/orange/reds with cobalt blue, purple/gold. etc
Fran,
someone here suggested Houzz once upon a time and I looked at it then, but forgot what it was called. Thanks for reminding me! I love the tree house. Here in NY you need a building permit for anything with a foundation/ footprint, so Ben was telling me about a co-worker that built a tree house for his kids to get around that rule. But Ben and I are not that handy.
Romy,
I am a no mess, no fuss type person so I'm definitely looking more towards native plants. The internet tells me that "Dutchess County soil textures are dominated by silty loam and loam (25 percent clay and 75 percent a mixture of sand and silt in roughly equal proportions)"
I really want to add some sort of low shrub between the house and the road with a break for the mailbox, but I'm not sure.
I'm going with low maintenance with some small hanging tree type things and these small pine tree type bushes my grandma has I like. I can not keep plants alive to save my life. Love ferns though but won't work everywhere.