Dan, I'm going to offer you just a couple of thoughts to consider before you proceed too far along on your project :-)

Planning a bog garden in an area that is naturally very dry (as under the canopy of Norway maples most often tends to be) seems to be counterproductive. One of the more widely held tenets of successful landscape design is to select plantings that are suited to the situation (the "right plant, right place" philosophy), rather than attempting to significantly alter the situation to accommodate specific plantings. Might there not be a more appropriate location for a bog garden, say like where drainage is poor and the ground stays moist after rains?

Also the planting area seems rather confined to accommodate two more trees and two rather large growing shrubs in addition to 'drifts' of herbaceous perennials. Not to mention your proposal of a bog area that will take up a third of the space. Do some research to see exactly how large these structural plants will eventually become and then enlarge the bed accordingly. Or reduce the size or quantity of the proposed plantings.

And finally I'd suggest you do some research on dry shade. Planting under the canopy of Norway maples poses some significant challenges as both the rain-diverting spread of the canopies and a very aggressive root system tends to rob the surrounding soil of any available moisture and most of the necessary nutrients. Many plants, including a good many that you plan to include, find this a very inhospitable growing situation.

I don't intend for this to entirely dampen your plans but only to suggest that there are more successful ways to approach this than simply asking us to provide a plan to place what on the surface seems to be a less than well researched or thought out selection of plants/uses for this particular area.

Hi there,

I am aware of how large the two under story tree's will eventually grow, I have seen them in the forest and have researched them in my plant book. I currently have one that has been in for 4 years now and it has grown very well under the trees. I very much like the structure of the tree and how it stretches over the corner of the patio and grows in layers. I want to added the second one to the other corner to screen behind the shed and to add some symmetry with what I think is a tree with amazing structure.

As for the bog, It has kind of been in and out in my mind for a while. I do have a spot that I could move the listed bog plants to.

The dryness will for the most part be solved with the leaf mold I am going to dig in. The area is raised about 3.5 feet from the base of the tree and there is not a lot of roots in the bed. Most the the dryness is because the soil is mainly sand and gravel, before my time the area was actually a driver way and have never really had amended properly.

So if I kill the bog idea what kind of plants would you suggest for the area. The Herbaceous plants that I listed are currently planted in the area and have done well even in the poor soil.

I have also been thinking that Sweet Woodruff would be very nice planted under the two Pagoda Dogwoods, I have a very large clump of this that I could divide for this purpose.

Again any plant, placements or bed layout suggestions would be greatly appropriated.

So exactly how big is this area? It doesn't look big enough to comfortably support 2 trees each with a potential 15' spread and two shrubs that will each grow to at least 7-8' tall and equally as wide, if not larger. But that may just be my impression from the photos.

Its 20' long and at the moment 8' deep but I am going to make it deeper, I have not decided what shape to make it and have not been given any ideas.

Should I just keep it down to the two dogwoods, I can move the Viburnums behind the patio? The trees behind have really long trunks that someone has cut all the lower branches off, I wanted the dogwoods to kind of fill the gap. I was then going to prune the bottom branches of the dogwoods so I could under plant in doing so still leaving a few so they don't turn out looking the tree behind us.

I forgot to add that I was reading a few older post on this forum and one person suggested if you have a larger tree to one side of a border to add three short-wider shrubs on the other side to balance.

If I was to forgo the second dogwood beside the shred, what shade shrubs could I plant that would not grow to be monsters and still provide a bloom/leaf color at some time of the year? Dwarf burning shrub?