Bill,

I'm prinnting your description out and will answer when I can. I'm a
Landscape Architect, I'd be happy to comsult with you on this if you'd
like-- I love the residual elements from the historic owners of the space--
priceless stuff.

Dave

"Bill Oliver" wrote in message
...
In article ,
David J Bockman wrote:
I seem to be coming late to this discussion Bill, but if I read it...

[snip]

You can also think about evergreens or conifers, which would produce
quite a
different effect.

Dave

Thanks for the advice. Yes, I am looking for something to line a
driveway, but am also looking for creative ways of making relatively
high sight borders to separate small areas of the yard. Basically,
this place I recently bought is on a knob on the side of a hill and has
about 5 acres of land. There is about 2 acres of *relatively* flat
land, with the land behind the house angling slightly up, and the land
in the front falling off into a small ravine that separates my land
from the next door neighbor. A good part of the front is cleared, with
a poorly-kept lawn. The rest is in brush and forest, with the brush so
thick it is impossible to walk through.

The interesting thing I have seen so far with the property is that
there are lots of little microenvironments that are very different
because of light, drainage, slope, etc.:

The area behind the house has a lot of large old oaks, poplar, dogwood,
and some other trees I haven't identified (I'm fairly new at this--my
background is in microbiology and medicine, not botany). It is very
shaded, relatively cool and moist, and has abundant natural ferns and
delicate natural plants with fairly subtle flowers that I also haven't
identified. It's biggest problem is that it is getting overgrown with
english ivy and has a *lot* of poison ivy -- which is not a big problem
for me, but my wife reacts to it.

The area in front of the house is cleared except for a couple of large
old trees that are not oaks, but I'm not sure what they are, yet. They
are around 60 ft tall and very gnarled. The trunks are about 6 ft in
diameter. It is the dome of this little knob, and is thus very well
drained and tends to be hot and dry compared with the rest of the
yard. Part is in the drainage field of the septic tank, which provides
slightly different growth.

As one goes more towards the ravine, and gets into the brush, there's a
lot of shade growth, but it is clearly a lot drier than the area behind
the house. Lots of morning glories, wild strawberry, wild blackberry
and such except where overtaken by dense woody brush. Lots of redbud,
dogwood, magnolia, oak, pine, and things I don't know. The trees are
awfully crowded, and many are clearly not healthy. Lots of dead wood;
the previous owner must have dumped the logs from clearing the open
area in the brush around the house. The brush is a significant habitat
-- with wild turkey, numerous birds, deer, raccoon, etc.

Continuing on down the ravine (which is *fairly* gentle), it starts to
get darker and moister again.

Finally, there was apparently a house built here in the mid 1800s that
was bulldozed and replaced by the original owner of the current house.
Scattered throughout the yard are the remnants of the original
hardscape -- parts of old fieldstone/flagstone retaining walls and
raised beds, ruined ornaments (I cut my way down the ravine one day and
ran across a stone sculpted birdbath covered with poision ivy), a
partially ruined hand-dug well with brick wall, etc. Some need to be
removed, and I am getting the well cleaned out and reinforced, but some
are attractive as ruins.

So, I plan to separate the yard and deal with each of the
microenvironments individually. I plan to put a shade/fern garden in
the back, break up the front lawn with different ground covers, do a
little terracing, etc. and connect the areas with footpaths. I would
like to have significant semi-formal sight borders between the areas.
I also want to maintain enough brush (preferably controlled, such as in
these larger borders) to provide habitat and cover for the critters
that are there now. I figure that having multiple small protected
areas as mini-gardens would be more conducive to critters than a large
open area. I have read, for instance, that it is better to build
borders by weaving limbs back into the border rather than pruning them
in order to create areas that birds like to nest in...

The other reason I plan to do it this way is that this is all fairly
new to me (my last yard was 0.25 acres), and concentrating on small
areas is more manageable and provides better learning that trying to
deal with everything all at once.

Finding trees to line the driveway isn't the big problem. The problem
I am concentrating on is figuring out the right kind of thing to build
the borders with, the right trees and hardscape to use as accents in
and along the borders, and how to plan the small areas and paths to
provide good visual effect.

I plan to be working incrementally on this for some years, and will
obviously be re-doing a lot of things as I learn, but some of this
early planning, particularly with the positioning of the paths and the
planting of the borders and trees, are things I will want to stick with
for some time. I want to plan it well.

billo