Today is garden day. I have a large yard. A wooden fence divides the house from the farm yard. I'd rather not cut grass but the sheer size of the borders, boundaries, etc. require some flat green stuff. My farmer insisted I could not just sew; I needed some physical exercise so... I don't know if he is really aware of how much 'black gold' I've buried in my new hobby! But I'm coming up out of zone denial and plain stupidity. When I read Bonnie Blanchette's article on 'Create a Garden Vignette' in Fine Gardening I got 'the vision' of how to pull the long continuous curve that spans the perimeter of our front yard all together. It is like figuring out the sashing for a sampler quilt. So I divided the border into areas with a focus (i.e. vignette/sampler block) and then I join it to the next one with zone 2, native, hardy, cheap, low maintenance, non agressive.... You are right, that narrows the list considerably. The good news is that mass plantings work well and wonder of wonders, I get stuff reseeding. Some will not be allowed to do that anymore, but it has been very helpful. I also was pretty quick on the uptake when people go oooh, when they find out we have LOTS of sheep manure. It has become the mulch of choice and I'm a now a believer in mulching. So now I'm happily planning vignettes and mulching away. I'm starting at the house and I'll work my way up the south side of the house, across the front verandah, over to the NE curve and so on. As I'm rather easily distracted, I shall get stuck at some vignette and probably not make the first turn. Do I here sighs from the resident weeds???