Taking my craziness outside.

I want this...

and this...

Yup, lots of this...

You get the idea.

But I currently have this ...

A naked barren yard.  We ripped out all the landscaping when we bought it this fall.

Its  an improvement from the big chocolate brownie it used to be...

Kind of killed my love of brown and yellow for a while.

But we bought it because this is at the end of the street...

So now my dilema begins. A clean slate is VERY overwhelming.  We are ripping out the rest of the fence this weekend. (More nakedness)  Now I need a plan. 

I gravitate toward structured English gardens because quite frankly my head is a whirlwind mess all the time.  I have too many projects and ideas spinning so I think I need the structure.  I like balance, things in pairs. (I can't just buy one lamp, has to be a pair... just in case I want to use them on nightstands.) 

I also love coastal cottage gardens too.   This is our fourth house in 5 years.  We have a house disease that has slowly been cured by having children.  Our energy has diminshed,  and we are not moving again until they are out of high school.  While doing this post I went through pictures of all our old houses for landscaping ideas...

We started here pre-kids on the Salem Common.  This is where I met my husband.  We could walk anywhere, anytime. It was fun. But it had no yard.  The Common was basically it.

From there we got pregnant and renovated this carraige house.  It had the Ropes Gardens next door. This was the view from the bedroom...

They were beautiful structured English gardens.  They were inspiring and intimidating.  Got lots of good ideas, but my energy was low with a new baby. Instead I just enjoyed the ones next door. (P.S. If you ever do visit Salem, MA be sure to check them out. Open to the public & a great place to read a book.)

Our last house is right up the street from where we are now. It was cute and cottagey.  Tons of peonies and hydrangea.  It had alot of good landscaping bones already in place.  We added fencing and a pergola, just started to get into the back yard when the current house came along. 

So now I am going to try to merge structured and coastal into a 60's ranch.  I really don't know if it can be done.  I'm afraid I'll have a bastardized ranch on my hands when I'm done.  I'm thinking lots of pea stone, boxwoods, hydrangea.  Maybe a fence.  It might look like this with some funky sculptures thrown in, I'm not quite sure...

I just know my head already hurts.