Sorry I am so late coming to your site - you are an inspiration to all, homeowners and advisers alike. For your planting advice, I suggest you call Merrifield Garden Center to see if they will come out your way. They currently have wonderful garden centers in Merrifield and Fairfax (both in Fairfax County) and a new one in Gainesville, but they may come further south to wherever you reside. (www.MerrifieldGardenCenter.com) Even if they don't send designers to your area, they are worth a trip to see their huge selection for a day of pleasure and inspiration, or to pick up some plants. Most of my clients are in the Fairfax and greater Washington area, but I am currently living out west below Front Royal, VA on the Shenandoah mountainside - wonderful views. cascio.offsite@gmail.com

Hi Wafster, We sell Glowstone (Australian trade mark) in Australia and also do some export. Check out details in our website www.nite-glo.com . In the right application, glow in the dark (photoluminescent, charged by sunlight or lights with reasonable uv content) can look and work fantastically. In other situations, a customer may have unreasonable expectations of the performance of the product and can be disappointed. Looking at the photos displayed recently on Houzz, they will definitely have been taken immediately after the glow products have been charged, and look their brightest. Also modern digital cameras enable low levels of light to be picked up, and corresponding photos may look quite a bit brighter than actual observation by eye. In the photos, one has to say WOW, but taken into a home, perhaps not fully charged, with some delay before viewing, maybe with the eyes not adjusted for night time vision, the result may not be as spectacular. Quite a few of our customers are concreters around Australia who use Glowstone for embedding into driveways, paths, around pools etc. If you would like more information or wish place an order, get in touch with me at info@nite-glo.com Charles Hrubos

And I would be planting trees – real trees not dwarf versions of trees and no more palms (unless you want to have palm tree themed garden – in which case a lot more palms are needed). I am not advocating planting forest giants but there are trees that will provide shade, shelter and a sense of scale that you won't get from yuccas and buxus and mondo grass and succulents alone. But before you start buying those trees you have a few decisions to make and a bit of analysis to do. 1. Orientation – you need to understand the basics of winter sun and summer sun, how much westerly sun you welcome and how much you need to shelter from it; where your prevailing winds blow from and whether this changes with the season also. So, once you've worked out where you want the sun to penetrate and at what time of the year, how to allow for wind, frost, whatever... you need to 2. Decide if you want a predominantly native garden, a range of deciduous trees or a completely eclectic selection (like the best 'English' gardens – which are planted out with plants from all over the world – Indian subcontinent, Asia, Africa, The Americas etc. Even some from Australia!). 3. Now the tricky bit – what do you love, i.e. which trees and plants make your heart really sing – and hopefully for more than two or three weeks of the year? Once you have that list which of those are likely to be happy in your climate, in your soil and with the amount of gardening attention (watering, feeding, pruning etc) that you're likely to enjoy lavishing on them. Your long list will by now be a much shorter (and more manageable list) but trees are what make a house look bedded in and part of a landscape rather than just sitting out in the open in a way that is both self-conscious and a bit awkward. Although, again I guess you could embrace the suburban awkwardness and go all Howard Arkley in which case keep it all small and suburban... But it is your garden and your house – make it look like what you want your house and garden to look and feel like! Good luck!

value to you or value when you put your house on the market? it depends on the project. yes, a well maintained driveway and tidy yard will *help* sell a property. elaborate/hard to maintain landscaping won't. many people actually will think 'wow that will take forever/cost a fortune to keep looking like that.' i think more people want easy care as their first priority, and wont pay any extra for an overdone yard. so these days, i'd go all minimalist for resale value. small grass area with automatic sprinklers in areas where expected rainfall will support it, more stone mulch and low water plants in areas that are dry. ticks are a problem and mosquitos as well, so a wildflower border needs to have a defined edge with grass/stone before sitting areas. the nice night lighting no one will ever see when you are selling your house unless its the sort that has its photos taken at night with all the lights on. we've just overhauled our pool area at our vacation home; our theory there is that we want the house to be at all times 100% ready to put up for sale when the day comes that its not fun to own any more. so that $25K won't improve the value of the home, it will keep the home saleable. and we'll get to enjoy it til then.