Hi Lizzie,

I, too, am a newbie but I have a few ideas for you. I have had a lot of advice thrown my way and everyone as said, "Don't fight nature." It is a losing battle. You will spend a lot of money and the day you put down your guard, you will see that a lot of your time an effort lost.

I have a similar situation but on a smaller scale but I have a lot of shade. The former owner, a gardener in his own right, planted rhodos and azaleas. You can plant these here and there in the woods and have some color in the forest. I am going to rent a tractor with a york rake to take up some of the rocks, if they aren't too large. This will give you some working room. Also, you will want to take some soil samples and send them to an ag extension to see how you may wish to amend the soil. I sent some to the Mass Ag Extension in Amherst and got back results within 2 weeks.

If you are going to amend the soil, do this naturally, avoiding mixes offered by Scotts and other commercial fertilizers. They are like crack. The dealer gives you the first free, Scotts won't, but then you hooked and don't skip a feeding or your plants will let you know.

Mind the results of the ag report and look for plants that will thrive in your zone, soil type, and sun conditions. Go to the library and get a few books that will offer advice and pics of the look you want, and go for it. Again, don't fight nature. Also, look around your area and see what is on other people's property with the same conditions and sun and wind exposure.

All the best. Bryan

Thanks for the advice from both of you. s8us89ds - I had to laugh at all your suggestions. :-) All good ideas, most of which we've thought of! I loved your earnestness and how well thought out it was, with the number of easy loops you'd ski, etc.. One important point to note, though, is just HOW rocky it is. It's difficult to convey to anyone who doesn't live in this area just how rocky it is. I have also lived in Maine and Mass. and I've never seen so many rocks. It's like a debris field of granite, mixed in with a little soil. The only area where digging is easy is right around the house, where they filled in (mostly with sand.) Removing the rocks is pretty much out of the question. Oh, also, there are old granite stone walls criss-crossing the woods. (I don't know if I mentioned that before.) We don't want to disturb those, and I am even thinking of clearing around them a bit, since they seem to be fast being swallowed up by dead leaves and such. But it would be nice to have clear trails out to view them.

We've also thought of a trail, but we haven't gotten to the point of planning out how we'd do it. With so many rocks, above and below ground, the ground is very uneven. (This wouldn't be much of a problem during the winter when snow evens it out, though.) There's also kind of a boggy area so we'd have to build some sort of wooden bridge or platform in one area, unless we bypassed that area all together. A trail seems great (and we have a "town forest" which has "real" trails yet is only 5 acres, total, so we should be able to do something similar on our land.) It seems like a walking trail would be more doable than a cross-country ski trail, though. Oh, but one problem - we lose a multitude of trees every winter, in wind storms and ice storms. We've had giant trees completely uprooted, and other trees just snap in two. Now it's not just a tangle of thorny bushes, it's a tangle of uprooted and downed trees. The amount of labor needed to clear those downed trees would be great, so we've just cut down the ones which snapped in half (and show from our house) and left the others to do their natural thing.... In any case, right now my biggest concern is working with the transition from yard to woods, and less gardening within the woods (too overwhelming to think about!)

All that said, I've rethought this issue a little bit since I posted my initial post. We're going to clear the overgrown blackberry bushes (which form almost an impenetrable border to the woods during the summer) but leave any saplings. That alone will make everything look more tidy. For the most part the cleared area around the house is a basic square (and, by the way, my husband does want to reforest, in part - grass-growing is a never ending battle against nature.) But, we have a little area off to one side of the square which is a perfect area for a firepit. We're going to clear the bushes there and build a stone fire pit. (One would think we'd use the readily-accessible natural stones, but each one is so incredibly heavy and they're half-buried that we will probably use landscaping stones. :-() Then, we just want the transition to woods to look slightly "considered" rather than ignored... at the very least, neatened up. I'd like to grow some lily of the valley... I'd love some wild lupine at the edge, if I can ever get anything to grow. I like the idea of rhododendrons for color.

I know there is a woodland botanical garden somewhere in Massachusetts, and they label the native species, and I could visit it to get some ideas.

That's great news that you're looking to reforest some or most of that area. I'm glad we seem to be on the same wavelength on a number of things.

- Leaves: I would consider years of uncleared leaves to be a treasure. They provide natural mulch to keep trees healthy, retain needed moisture, protect from temperature extremes, slowly decompose and enrich the soil, and host wildlife and food for wildlife. In the areas you're looking to reforest, I wouldn't clear any of those leaves at all. They're the foundation of any healthy forest ecosystem.

- Downed trees: I would consider these a treasure as well. Some forms of wildlife only make their homes in or under downed trees. Downed trees also host other forms of life that are good for your forest ecosystem.

- Tangle of thorny bushes: If these are native forest underbrush, then they're a goldmine as well. They provide food and homes for multiple types of wildlife as well. The only thing needed would just be to clear paths through them, and clear small holes (say 3 feet by 3 feet) in them where you can plant tree saplings. If you're doing mass tree-planting, then you'd need to clear more. But I would try to preserve as much as possible.

- Rocky soil: I did some super-quick research on rocky soil and it looks like there are some types of trees and plants that are best suited for it. I would start with these. In fact, I would probably limit myself to those species that grow best in rocky soil, as opposed to what species are most pleasing to us humans. Otherwise the survival rate of anything you plant will suffer.

- Walking or skiing trail: It can be the same thing. If you make a walking trail, you can also use it for cross country skiing. If it's wide enough for 2 people to walk side-by-side on the trail, even barely, then it'll be plenty wide enough for 1 person to comfortably cross-country ski on it. Cross country skiing is an easy hobby to learn. It's something that can be learned to do decently in a single afternoon with no prior experience. Snowshoeing is even easier.

A big word of CAUTION!

Once you touch the woods, it will become an never ending maintenance issue! Some thing doesn't look right, That's too big, let's get rid of that fallen tree etc....... So be very selective to what your about to embark in doing. Spoken from someone who had several acres and one thing always led to another, then another!

Now back to your original question, there are quite a few woodland ground cover you could use on the sloped area. Once planted, you wouldn't have to do anything! Ground covers; Stonecrop, thyme, English Ivy, Creeping Myrtle, Creeping phlox, Auga to name a few!

As for the thorn bushes, cut them back, and then you will have to dig them out. If they are the wild variety, they will most likely have runners, and will require to be dug out!

As for edge wood plants, Hosta would work great. They do spread over time, slowly and really don't require much attention. To bad you don't live in IL as I've got some overgrown Hosta beds I've been thinning out and have been pitching the plants as I can't find people who would want them!

Just a reminder again, once you start to make changes to the woods, the maintainance begins!!!

Cheers! And have fun!!!

AL

You may want to consider cutting the blackberries back now and let them come back this summer, then harvest the berries and cut the vines back again. Continue doing this and you can make use of the bush while keeping it under control. Use it as a blessing rather than a curse. On the other hand, blackberries are sem-evergreen here so maybe try experimenting with a few them to see how fast they grow back since your climate is quite different than mine.

As for the fallen trees, one of the state parks here leaves the trunks on the ground but cuts the limbs off. They then run the limbs through a chipper to make mulch. This way the trunk stays for the critters but the limbs are not obstructing the view for bike riders.

I can't offer much help with the rock situation though. Here on the Gulf Coast, there are not any large rocks other than a few crops of sand stone. The soil is either mucky clay or sand. Some folks buy large rocks to use as yard decoration.

I guess it is just human nature to want something different. When I was growing up we chopped down palmettos because we consider them a nuissance but then we buy rocks and cacti.

Please do not plant English Ivy near a natural area. It creeps along slowly and then suddenly it is all in the woods, going up trees and it can take over the place.

I would go with the natural approach, editing out what is not native (but which has seeded in) and adding as you discover what you like (but nothing invasive).

I do not know what zone you are in --- but you might want to consider interspersing the woods with mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia), a New England native. There are numerous cultivars in a wide range of sizes and flower colors. They are hardy to zone 5 and in microclimates in zone 4. They would add color, and understory texture and interest.

If i were you i would first remove as many invasive species as u can like briar and blackberry. Then, Buy yourself a bunch of baby trees like pine, oak, whatever is native to your area in the places you want that forest look. Then plant in some understory trees that are native to your area like dogwood. Lastly, after a few years of growth plant in native wildflowers like trillium. The main idea here is to use native plants and to build in layers because that is how it occurs in nature. If you plant non natives like hosta it just doesnt look like your in an Eastern USA forest, more like a Chinese forest. Plus you will get a whole bunch more interesting wildlife with natives. Also, do not clean up leaf litter because it decomposes and becomes fertilizer for the trees. It also gives many critters a place to live. Follow this and in no time you will have your very own nature preserve in your backyard.

Add creeping myrtle or vinca to the never-ever plants that esh_ga mentions. I've seen the forest equivalents of a wasteland where vinca covers great swaths of the forest floor choking out everything but the trees that can grow above it. Apart from the trees, it becomes nearly a monoculture.

Stick with a variety of plants native to your region. Go to local parks and trails and see what native plants are growing there. Take your camera. Take pictures. Get some field guides or help from the Name that Plant forum and ID what you like the looks of. Read up on it and see if it would be a good candidate for your woods.

FataMorgana