Beautiful!!

I will share 2 other pictures which show the beginning of my "garden". My first step was to lay out a path, a loop, which you can see the fork of here. Woodchips, the width of a small tractor or Bobcat, to keep people on a path and off the forest floor.

The woodland becomes a journey with a path -- how powerful it is as a simple design element

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I have also been moving plants, some into a sunny holding bed, but some into the woods. This is my "hellebore holding bed", with 100 or more hellebores, some kalmias and rhodies, and a southern magnolia (M. grandiflora) in the center.These are deep in the woods where they are protected, but ultimately the hellebores at least will be going up on a slope near the house. I have decided that the woods farther from the house will be for only eastern North American native plants.

Beautiful, David. Sometimes a path is just about all that is needed.

I put a little dry stream bed across the front of my lot in September. A water path. Simple and striking. i've planted Canadian ginger and waterlily autumn crocus, ferns and tricyrtis along the banks, An artifice, but it does follow the real runoff from the hills above.
Ginger

Love it! The pictures of the same scenes in two different seasons are indeed beautiful.

I agree about the path. Half of my property is wooded and I have only done paths so far ... but it feels better already.

That's beauiful! Ginger was that difficult what you did with the dry stream bed? That is something I always wanted to do. Sarah

No. Following the path of natural runoff(mostly), we dug a shallow trench about 3.5' wide and lined it with 4-5" of river stone" bought in bags from Agway. The aesthetic part was setting larger rocks and stones along the edge to look as if the water made its way around them or pushed them off to the side. Then the plantings on the banks. It looks so real that its startling. Next spring I will continue it down over the bank towards the road. I am trying to send some photos to another GWebber; I'll send some to you as soon I get to it.

Forgot to add that we put down weedcloth before placing the riverstone.

Hi David. The pictures of your woodlands are beautiful.
I think you still have more leaves on the trees than we
do here in TN.

I can imagine how hard you are working moving all those plants. It is already so very beautiful and
I can only imagine how gorgeous the whole 6 acres is going to be in a year or two.

I've still not mastered the art of picture posting on GWeb so can't show you my woodland, but David, you are going to have such a satisfying time with the natural sculpting of your woodlands. It is a totally different feeling - very serene, in contrast to perennial gardening in beds. I've followed your many posts on the perennial forum so I know you will do a beautiful job. Let us know what plants and shrubs you choose for the native areas, thats what I'm working on right now.

I just put many small clethra, itea, fothergilla, viburnum, kalmia and hellebore into a holding bed till next year. If we didn't have so many deer I'd have more variety. Some of my favorites are still Christmas fern on the hillsides and mini-groves of ostrich fern and Leucoethoe fontanesia
"Rainbow". Next year I am going to find a spot somewhere back on the property for a sour cherry and a mulberry for the birds. My objectives are to plant enough bird food that we can cut down on seed, which for us is just an open invitation for the raccoons and squirrels to find new and inventive ways to tear up expensive bird feeders.

Keep the photos coming!
Andrea

Beautiful. One thing I learned living in a woodland setting was to LIMIT the cultivated or changed areas. Keep them small and interconnected, but concentrate on these & leave the "wild" areas completely alone. The cultivated areas might be a rock garden, pathway, swale, grass border around the house, etc.

This keeps your goals & amount of required work in bounds, and looks much better.

Thanks for comments all. It is interesting that nearly all the advice I have gotten is directed toward not doing "anything" or "not too much". Believe me, I hardly plan to start cutting trees (except a little buckthorn here and there, hardly any there), and doing some editing out of other understory tree groups to leave the best. And I don't plan to start putting in hostas everywhere, LOL. I have given a lot of though to what will be more garden like and what will be less-edited native woodland. There is an east facing slope right next to the house that I would see as the most 'gardenesque' area, where I will plant woodland plants from around the world. The rest of the woods, the vast majority, will be soley plants of the eastern US, though not necessarily only from Michigan. I do plan to augment the understory tree and shrub layer, eventually the forest floor layer too, but I need to be cognizant of keeping the "managed" areas "manageable". I think a major decision on this very sandy soil will be how much to plan to irrigate. Watering newly planted plants in this very dry fall has been a major task.

Awesome! Wish we got that kind of a color change down here; just brown and more brown :I've large wild fern and the native azalea in my patch of shaded heaven. Starting to plant other natives; silver bell tree, more native azalea and I couldn't resist camellia and non-native azalea. I really want to try the mayapple and ... oh and many more!
Beautiful pics and way to go!
Mike

Thanks so much for sharing your woodland pictures. We are using the ferns photo as wallpaper in our computer. You are very fortunate to have such lovely land and woods.

GORGEOUS! just beautiful. Thanks for sharing the photos. You have such wonderful property. Ours is just a city backyard that used to be a farm woodlot (3rd growth) so it's all "canopy" and nothing from the canopy on down. LOL.. and we have "midget paths" compared to yours. ;o) Enjoy your new paradise! (I'm envious) ;o)

Barb
Southern Ontario, CANADA
zone 5b/6a

I like the broad paths. You can even stay on them in limited light situations. I'm friends with several trimmer companies and they bring me all the wood chips I want. Great for paths! I like to make the center of the paths a little higher than the edges. Here in the Seattle area I have to put down chips at least once a year. I even throw a little in the beds for a mulch once the winter rains get the soil wet.

I also like the large bed of ferns. They look very nice in large swaths. I am going to do more of that on my place.

Here is a link that might be useful: Fall path in my garden

Oh BoTann,
What a splendid place you have to live upon. If there is a heaven, I'm sure your address is listed as one of the portals to it. In some of your slideshow pictures, I'm reminded of Robert Frost's poem, 'The Road Less Travelled'
fireflyintexas
ps: If I may, I'm adding the poem here....have a wonderful fall!

'Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.'

-Robert Frost

GORGEOUS BoTann! Just gorgeous! Fall Colours I hope to see in my woodland garden some day as I plant both my front and woodland for the fall colour and would like to also put some things in for winter colour like dogwood with yellow or red bark and something with colourful berries that will be nice and showy against the white snow. My highbush cranberry usually keeps it's berries well into the winter before all the birds eat them. Thanks for sharing your photo :o)

Barb