Garden State

Ever since I bought the house, I've been running through my head what I want to do with the property outside of the house. I pretty much decided that, with a few small exceptions, I wouldn't be touching any big landscaping projects for the first couple of years here - focus on the inside. However, there is a lot of opportunity here to do some amount of gardening.

Since it's been getting warmer, I've been looking at the yard and flower beds and thinking about what I could do with them. I'd really like to be able to get rid of the ornamental plants all around the house and find interesting, attractive, provisional plants to replace them with (in addition to having a traditional garden plot in the back corner of the back yard). I just recently bought a "Bucket O Seeds" - which has a ton of different types of heirloom garden seeds.

Front Yard

• There is a bed the runs the length of the retaining wall from the top of the stone steps to the end of the driveway. I am thinking that would be a good spot for a line of blueberry bushes with creeping strawberries to act as a cover fill.
• Around the boulder in the front yard, I am considering some sort of thorn berry. Either Raspberries or Blackberries. I prefer Blackberries, but Raspberries are less vicious with their thorns so that may be the deciding factor.
• The brick steps at the end of the retaining wall either need to be torn up or turned into a planter bed. Not really sure what I'd want to go in there, but a low growing herb that obeys boundaries might be a good idea there.
• The beds directly in front of the house are probably going to remain untouched. There are several big rhododendrons along with some sort of ivy covering the ground. I would like the ground cover there to be something other than the ivy but I am not sure what would be good.
• The "Heart Shaped" bed at the end of the driveway is another mystery. It has a tree at the end but I am not sure why type - we'll see what it flowers with. I wouldn't mind getting a fruit bearing tree in there - would be nice to have apples at the end of the drive. For ground cover, was thinking of some sort of flower mixture but again, if I can get something there that bears fruit, I would prefer it.

Backyard

• The back right corner of the back yard is going to be the "official" garden plot where I'll be planting various veggies. It gets a lot of sun, so I'll have to be careful about not planting some of the more light/heat sensitive stuff back there.
• The back line of the property would also be a decent place to plant some grapes. Get some trellis for them to grow on and get the potential benefit of them acting as a privacy screen at the back of the property.
• My next door neighbor warned me that he's spotted woodchucks in both his and my backyard in the past, so I'll have to keep an eye out for them.