I don't see anything childish in your post. You speak better than a lot of teens. :)
I'd suggest you learn about feeding the soil life. If you do that, your gardens will do better overall. The compost forum is a good place to learn about that. I've seen such a world of difference in the growth of plants on our current property, which is on forested land, so the soil consists of several decades of plant debris and a very good balance of good and bad insects, so I rarely have to intervene. In former places we lived, it took me a couple of years to get the soil in shape and to get the insect balance back. I've gardened organically all my life, but I don't get into the politics of it like so many organic gardeners do.
Hostas would be nice in the shade of the maple. There's a wide variety of them and you can see people's photos of them on the hosta forum. There are a lot of shade loving perennials.
Persistence is the key to getting rid of blackberries. If you cut them all down in the fall, then you disrupt the food stores going to the root system, so they're weaker the next season. There are some strong herbicides for them, but I don't know if they kill them all with one spraying since I don't use them. We had 1/2 an acre of them when we bought our land and just kept mowing them down all the time to get rid of them.
Enjoy learning and remember that the soil is the key to plant health. I wish I had learned that in my teens. Take before and after pictures too so you can see the progress and look back on it when you're older.

Welcome! I always like to see someone your age beginning the lifelong journey of gardening. You are fortunate indeed to start developing your interest early, as there are so many things you can do with and learn from a patch of land - one lifetime just isn't enough.

As an old gardener to a young gardener, I would offer the following advice:

1) If you take care of the soil, it will take care of you. Take the time to test. Amend. Compost. Mulch.

2)You will find that there are lots of different methods on the best way to do anything. Experiment and determine which way works for you and the plants that you want.

3) You will kill a lot of plants - good gardeners kill LOTS of plants. Don't let a death bring you down. Spend time researching why a plant didn't perform so you can correct the situation.

4) Get good equipment - avoid gadgets. Spend a little more for good constuction - cheap stuff will need to be replaced frequently, but most garden equipment should last decades.

5) Read. There are thousands of great gardening books out there, but there are a couple that no gardener should be without. My two favorite gardening books are the "Western Garden Book" by Sunset, and "Plant Propagation" by either the American Horticultural Society or the Royal Horticultural Society. "Plant Propagation" is expensive, but in the long run will save you a ton of money.

6) Get your head out of the shiny catalogs and get digging. In the end, muscles are what makes a good garden, not the newest hybrid seed or somebody's miracle fertilizer.

Blackberries are really tough and one of the obnoxious things about gardening in our part of the world. Get long goatskin gloves (thorns don't peirce them easily) and just keep whacking away. They are shallowly rooted, so once you whack the top growth, the roots are easy to shovel up. Don't let new canes touch the ground, and pull up babies as soon as you see them. You will never really be done with them until you move or die, whichever comes first.

I like my digging fork, it's got four straight tines and digs through soil more easily than a shovel, once you have the loose soil, a shovel gets out the dirt. If your soil is really lovely you might not find it as useful, but I find shovels have trouble with even smallish rocks, where the fork just requires a little wiggling to get around them.

I have a mattock I like for digging up big blackberries or other bushy type weeds. It's a tool with three tines on one end and a hoe type blade on the other. You can shove the tines under a big blackberry crown, then rock over onto the hoe end to get leverage for pulling them up. Leverage is wonderfully useful.

Leather gloves make a huge difference in pulling up blackberries.

One of the biggest advantages to mulching and adding compost that I rarely hear mentioned is that it's so much easier to pull weeds from good soil, the roots just pull out so much more easily.

Beware of plants that are described as vigorous growers or good spreaders. They can be difficult to control or get rid of.

Remember to look at light at all times of the day. Areas that are bright at one time of day, may be shady at others. Plants have to be where you put them all day, and may not be happy if you don't take that into account. I know I still make misestimates of light levels.

Visit lots of other gardens, it'll give you a feel for how big the little nursery plants really do get. Then you won't crowd your specimens or give bad advice to your customers. It's okay to plant things to fill space that you plan to pull up when the specimens get big, but it'd be a shame to have two loved plants fighting each other.

Look for a local garden club, you can get lots of starts and good very local advice from people who know. Most have sales too.

Fall is a marvelous time for planting stuff, and there are often good sales too.

Have fun!

Put out a bird feeder and a bird bath. The birds will help eat insects, and be company for you when you garden. The birdbath will tell you when it's time to water. The rain may not be enough to wet even the top of the soil, and a dry bird bath lets you know that rainfall minus evaportion hasn't been enough.

Add a couple of chairs right away. It will give you a place to relax between jobs, and a place to sit and look at your yard, imagining what will be there.

I learned from a garden trip to England to plant in clumps of 2'x3' up to 3'x5'. Plant bulbs in clumps, too, not in straight rows. Looks much more natural.

Mulch the top of your soil to keep down weeds, or you'll be spending all your time weeding instead of planting and fertilizing. I have learned this one the hard way.

Keep a journal, both written and photos.

Pick a color scheme, either hot (with shades of orange and yellow) or cool (with blues in the reds and pinks). White and gray go with everything.

Vary the leaf size and shape color of your leaves or they will look like one big green mass.

Don't hesitate to move a plant if it's not happy, or you're not happy with where it is.

When you're planting, make sure the rootball is wet by pre-soaking, and the hole/soil is wet, too, before you plant.

Here's a photo of my side garden. There was nothing here but grass and weeds when I moved in. No beds, paths, or flowers, just the old pear tree (you can see the trunk behind the chairs). I've added everything else.

Good luck, and enjoy!
Daphne in Tacoma

I suggest you read these articles.

Here is a link that might be useful: Horticultural Myths

Ah, thanks!
I think I'll go for the "hot" color scheme in my garden. My Mom found one of Grandma's old plants and almost teared up, so I put it in the spot where one was planted in the front yard garden patch while she was young. It's called a "bleeding heart" she said, and claims it should look like hearts with drops of blood on the bottom, I found it somewhat eerie that a plant would just so happen to be shaped the way we comically perceive a heart, but it is a nice pink color so I'll enjoy it. Thats about 6 feet away from the maple I spoke of, and I recently placed two "cup of fire" as the package called them, peony's about a foot and a half from each other, just to the east of the bleeding heart.

There are no weed problems in that part of the yard, they're all in the back. It goes out about an acre as well.

I have started to make a compost bin out of wood I cut down in the back yard, I'll be sure to check the compost forum out.
And about tools, yes I thought having strong tools would be important, so even though it's the only tool available to me at the time, I saved up and bought a nice fiberglass handled steel alloy shovel(ever trusty to beat those wretched berries with).

If anyone has any ideas about what would go nice with the bleeding hearts and peonys, I'd love to hear, I'd like a garden that looks like it's on fire.

I will take pictures, and keep a journal, thank you for that idea.

I'll go check the compost forum right now!

- Lucas

Daphnexduck - what a gorgeous post! It really struck a chord with me .... thank you!

I like to plant so that there is a sucession of bloom from early spring until fall-
early Spring
Hellebores, species Tulips, Daffodils, Pulmonarias
Spring
Aquilegia, Ajugas, Saxifrage, Peonies, Bleeding Hearts, Irises (particularly Tall Bearded), Roses, Clematis, Hardy Geraniums, Rosemary, Epimedium
Summer
Roses
Roses, daylilies, Phygelius, Fuchsias, Hardy Geraniums, Lilies, Fruit- (you have to eat too) Apples, Pears, Blueberries, Raspberries tomatoes, squash, beans,
Fall
Roses, Fuchsias, grasses, changing leaves, Japanese Anemones

Perhaps you can guess that I like roses!

Walk around an established older neighborhood and see what is growing that you like, and how people arrange their plants.

Your bleeding hearts and peonies are only going to be around in spring so you might consider what will come into bloom in other seasons.

Welcome to the gardening community. One of the things I have found, is that in the PNW there is a heck of a lot of green. So if you want flowers to show up you have to have them massed in spots rather than spread out everywhere -- they will disappear into the greenery. I use a lot of pots -- the bigger the better to make this effect. The other thing that gives you a big bang for a few bucks is shrubs. Yes, they usually are only in flower for a short period of time but you can buy a flowering shrub for under $10 and in one year it will grow well. Shrubs give you some nice bones for your garden to develop around. Make sure you buy the right plant for the right place. Check sun, moisture, eventual size and colour. And for the first oouple of years you can grow annuals from seeds which give you an enormous amount of colour very inexpensively. Pick seeds that grow readily. A lot of varieties grow better in place than by transplanting. Cosmos, sunflowers, gaillardia, popies all grow easily and give you lots of colour but won't become a nuisance. Good luck and I look forward to reading your journal -- blog on line maybe?

Ah, thank you for the advice!
The only reason I've not yet tried to grow any sort of annual yet, is because it seems as though it would be hard for me to watch it die.

Raising it from seed, watching it grow, seeing it bloom...
Then watching it die. Of course this may serve very well as a growing experience, after all, everything must return to the earth at some point. I'll definitely try those then.

I do have a readily available source of old half decayed red alder leaf matter, If I'm not utterly mistaken that's good for the soil? I'd love to be able to say I've not used manufactured fertilizer.

- Lucas

You are right -- leaf mould is one of the best things to use. Natural compost materials such as this add nutrients (but you never have to worry about it burning plants)but best of all, add moisture retenting matter to the soil so it is a great amendment. We were at Glendale gardens in Victoria and they use it as a mulch in all of their perennial beds. As you know, when our winter rains finally stop, summer is dry for months so this is important. Can you start a compost box? If you don't have time to build a proper one, you can just start a pile in a corner of your property. Check out the soil forum for ideas on this. As to the annuals dieing -- most of the ones I mentioned will self-seed so it's neat to see what comes up by themselves next year.

Don't shed a tear for annuals - one of the beautiful things about gardening is seeing the seasons change in your garden. Fall brings dormancy for some and death for others, but it's not sad because they will be back. Perennials are taking a nap and annuals will have left you in charge of their precious babies.

Collect the seed of your annuals and start again next spring. It will be as if they never left.

Be an organic gardener but don't hesitate to use RU when absolutely necessary. It is okay.
-LG

Ah, I forgot about plants leaving seed behind! Maybe I should see how many years I can keep a line of plants coming from the same first seed...

Today I got outside and did quite a bit of work, I mowed, put the grass clippings in an old wooden barrel I've decided to use as a compost bin, gathered alder leaves, weeded the garden, planted some sage in plant pots to try and grow, trimmed back the rhododendrons(maybe more than I should have), watered, and even saved an old small rose bush I found in the back yard, being strangled to death by thorns. It should be fine now that it's in a pot though.

When I'm outside doing all this, I feel at home. I quite pleased with what work I've done thus far, and can't wait to get out there again tomorrow. I've taken interest in a small crab apple tree I saved from the thorns as well. It's blossoms aren't extraordinary, but it is a very cute addition to the yard now that I've cleared them[thorns] from the front.

Thanks for all the advise, it's helped alot. But I'm still reading this thread though, I've heard a good bit of advise, but I would always like more opinions and wisdom.

Lucas

Putting down a mulch after you weed can prevent some of them from coming back from roots left behind. I use a lot of straw mulch, because it's cheaper than bark mulch, but I live on acreage so it's more acceptable than it might be on a city lot. I will also lay down newspapers or cardboard with a mulch on top to kill off weeds, much easier than pulling them all and it benefits the soil too. It won't stop blackberries, though. They'll just come up through it, as will thistle.
Be careful of what you let go to seed. Birds will transport them to other areas and some can be invasive, choking out native plants.
Your rhododendron won't have blooms next year where you trimmed it, just to warn you. It will the following year, though if you don't cut it back again. A lot of people whack them back to get a fuller plant.
You'll learn a lot through successes and failures along the way, just as I still do. That's what's nice about gardening, you never quit learning. If I'd had the internet when I was gardening in my youth, I'd be way ahead by now! I started gardening before I was ten. My grandmother lived with us and she let me have a little plot in her garden, so I spent a lot of time tending that little piece of land. Then in my teens I took over the vegie garden. My grandmother had a small greenhouse that I grew cacti in too, so that was a fun diversion from the outside plants.
Enjoy your days in the garden and take some pictures to show us your progress.

Nasturtiums are my favorite annual. The seeds are large and have a high rate of germination, the flowers and leaves are edible, and the seeds are easy to save. Voles like them too, though. The flowers add a nice peppery taste to salads. I haven't cooked the leaves much but it can be done.

Also they like the cool season so can be planted out fairly early in May. In CA they come up in the fall, grow all winter, and quit when it gets hot.

The easiest way I've seen to kill blackberry vines is to cut them real close to the ground and dab some full strength roundup on the stub. This ends up in the roots and the plant and all it's vile offspring are wiped out. Roundup and similar products are biodegradable.

The best vegetable gardening book I have is Steve Solomon's " Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades". It's available at most libraries in my area.

We moved in nine years ago and a small slope, which could have had a pretty garden, was choked with blackberries. I did what Sundevil said. Wade in, snip, gingerly pull out what I'd snipped, then squirt round-up on the stub. Over and over every day for three weeks. After they were dead, I got in there with a pickaxe and a fork, and removed a lot of their roots along with choked daylilies.

Today, the slope is a pretty garden, with occasional blackberry shoots that I can pull by hand.

Fran

Ah many thanks to all of you.
Just today I bought some nice strong gloves. Though I couldn't find goat skin, I did find some hard leather that were lined inside with some sort of fabric, and my hands are rather big, the seams normally hurt them, but not with these. I shall be waging war on the 'morrow. Wish me luck!