My fiance and I have been renovating a 100+ year old house for the past year. All of our efforts have been on the house itself, and the backyard has mostly been a disaster of bricks (took down the fire place), piles of dirt from the crawl space, and piles of god-knows-what from various projects.
We're finally ready to tackle the backyard and have recently put up a corrugated metal fence. When it comes to landscaping we're completely lost. The yard is pretty much a 25' x 45' rectangle. We'd like to keep the middle pretty open for our dog to run around in. I've always envisioned colorful plants all along the fence, but I have no idea - NO IDEA - what looks good together. I look at other yards with a mix of plants and think if I tried something similar it would look like a mess.
I would really appreciate plant suggestions (for zone 6) and design ideas. And plants that are easy to find (think Lowes and Home Depot).