Welcome to the Garden that will be ... one day

Welcome to our home in Marshall, Missouri. We moved here in the fall of 2005. Our house was built in 1941. I'd describe it as having old world charm, but I was born that year and don't consider myself old world. Maybe traditional is a better description. We have done a little remodeling and decorating inside the house in the past four years. We had fencing installed toward the end of May 2009, which gave us an excuse to move outside and do some serious landscaping.

I want to keep a log of the changes, and what better place to do it than here? To step off, here's a rough drawing of the house and yard. It's not quite to scale, and the orientation is a bit off. The top side of the plan is east; south is to the right, west at the bottom, and north at the left side. In my mind's eye, I was facing the front of the house when I sketched it. The shaded places are, you guessed it, shady places. There are a lot of big trees here. The shade in the lower right corner (SW) comes from a tree just outside the fence but not shown on the plan.

[Hmmm. The plan is supposed to show up with an enlarged version when you poke it, but that's not happening on my computer. If it doesn't happen on yours, let me know and I'll try to figure out what little box needs to be ticked or unticked to make it happen.]

My plan is for a garden with lots of flowering plants and bushes, vines on the fences, sculpture here and there, and maybe a fountain. Most of the flowers will be low maintenance perennials, and much of the grass will disappear; grass pathways between islands of flowers would be ideal. I'm basing this somewhat on the perennial gardens at Powell Gardens, a wonderful botanical garden southeast of Kansas City and romantic notions of English country gardens.