Start with the plan. You'll change it as you progress, but get the plan going first.

Next, get the big stuff in the ground -- the trees. Move on to the middle layer with shrubs and then taller herbs and plants. Finally, do the bottom layer. Same principle applies if you do two layers or 4 -- big stuff first.

For ideas, I would drive around and look at people's yards and overgrown fence lines and wooded edges. I see a lot of non-edible forest gardens in peoples' yards -- they just don't know that's what they did!

My key concern with your list of edibles is that they are almost all exclusively full sun plants. The brambles will manage in part shade as will many of the herbs. For the vegetables, perhaps you should give them a sunny eastern exposure so they can get some direct morning sun. Depending on the variety, many will appreciate a break from the hot afternoon sun.

Alternately, you may want to do one area in a layered garden and have another area with raised beds or edible landscaping that gets all that sun. Given the size of the space you have, if you have many fruit trees you will need to espalier train them. Without seeing the place, that sized area with that kind of list of desired plants seems to lend itself more to a potager garden. You might consider it if you aren't already familiar with it. You can easily incorporate layered areas in a potager garden -- in fact, you should!

Either way, starting with bare soil is a luxury and I am envious. Enjoy! The FIRST thing I would do is to cover (solarize) any parts that you don't want to be covered with weeds by the end of two weeks. Otherwise your plan to proceed slowly is going to add a lot of work digging out a layer of weed sod when you get to that part.

If you can get your hands on a copy of "Edible Forest Gardens" by Dave Jacke, there is a lot of wonderful info on good plant combinations, as well as a few sample layouts. It's an enormous thing (2 enormous things, actually, it's 2 volumes) but wow is it wonderful. I'm new to the forest gardening movement but it feels like I found what I've been looking for ever since I started being interested in gardens.

It's an expensive book (around $120 for both) but I got it through inter-library loan first before I got hooked and took the monetary plunge. :)

Anyway, good luck!

Here is a link that might be useful: Edible Forest Gardens

I second the recommendation to get "Edible Forest Gardens." It's an amazing and inspiring book. Another good one is "Gaia's Garden," which covers most of the basics and has a good section on creating guilds (groups of complementary plants).

Here is a link that might be useful: Gaia's Garden

Thanks folks! I've actually put both those books on my "Hey Mom! Wanna get me these books" List! LOL Ever since I was little I kept a list of books I want to get and that's what my Mom uses as my goft list! Always ben a nerd! I'm so excited to get started on this! The house seems to be taking forever! Now if I can just do a voodoo dance to keep Dean from clobbering us here in New Orleans (don't know if I could take that), I'll be good! I've been looking at espaliered trees and I'm not sure about that. This is going to be my first go and landscaping and gardening in general. We've pretty much always been renters. My MIL lives with us and she's got quite the green thumb, so I'm hoping to pick up some good tips from her as well! But it seems to me that down here in New Orleans "full sun" means something different than in say northern Indiana. Hibiscus is supposed to be a full sun plant, but my neighbor has some on the west side of his house where because of how the houses are positioned, it only gets about 4 hours of sun, and they look like trees! That's proving the most difficult for me. Figuring out how much sun each area of the yard gets and I'm clueless about figuring out if there are any "micro-climates" out there! I guess what I'm going to have to do is just go sit out in the yard for a full day and see what happens! Thanks again folks!