Landscape Project Step 1: ETA: Step 2!

[simpsongal]

Edit to update w/After photos! (rather than post a new thread) - I didn't bother posting the in progress pics b/c the space after the trees and fence came down looked rough!

After!

[yay, I finally figured out how to PIP...]

We're on a 1/2 acre corner lot , it's heavily landscaped.  The house sits at an angle.  We finally decided to tear out the row of arbor vitae along the back fence line (runs along part of the hypotenuse of the sort of triangle-shaped lot to the crepe myrtles at the edge.  They were 50 years old, not in great shape, full of honeysuckle vines and honestly, just not terribly interesting.  

Step 2 will be moving our fence back ~4-5 ft to the property line (when we moved in we had to jut the fence in b/c the arbor vitae were too big/wide to fence them in.  The neighbors own the 6 ft fence, we own the estate style one.  We'll probably remove the split rail fence & gate since the garden is too big.

The area we need to landscape is zone 7, full sun.  treedimensional I saved you list of favorite plants.  I'm thinking of adding a black gum tree (my in laws have one and LOVE it), another cryptomeria, moving a panticulata hydrangea here too, maybe a small ornamental tree, and a mixture of other plantings.  We've also thought about adding a shed.  I need to be strategic about place evergreens (e.g., to hide the view of the neighbor's driveway). 

before (the fence & gate are our garden area):

After:

Below:

We tore out the sickliest row of arbor vitae ourselves a couple years ago and re-landscaped that area (in the photo below that hydrangea std ringed by knockout roses is to the right of the pic below

The property goes quite a bit further left, there's a giant spruce, cedar, oak tree, yoshino cherry tree, and shade garden (that's all on the screened porch side of the house).

[mrsukyankee]

Lovely ideas - can't wait to see them come to fruition!

[sassystace]

Wow! Big change with removing those arborvitae. Good luck, sounds like a lot of work.

[simpsongal]

So re: the after - it looks so much larger and cleaner. I'm sure it will look even better once the plants grow in and the grass grows as well. We'll probably add a new raised tomato bed to the area and we may line our beds w/brick (which we have leftover from removing our garden path).

List of new plants we added: Japanese stewartia, smoke bush fringe tree, ikandi japanese maple, moonrise japanese maple, witch hazel (Diane), several pieris and varigated eunonymous, and a few others.

The cost for the whole project was almost $6000 (included taking down trees & grinding stumps, removing old fence and installing new fence, new plant purchase, creating in new landscape beds and removing old beds to seed for lawn.

I guess the neighborhood had landscaping fever b/c our back and side neighbors took down a bunch of huge mature trees, changing the light we receive in other areas of our yard.  Looks like we have even more landscaping projects in our future....

[mrsukyankee]

Looks great!

[ktzmoh]

Wow it really opens up the yard. That must have been a huge job to take those out!

[Deleted]

Looks awesome and really opened up the space!