You've said that the solution is "privacy," "trees" and "screening" ... but how did you get there? What's the thought process behind it and the degree of screening desired?

A potential problem is the list of plants you don't want "compromised." Trees produce shade. Some existing plants may not like as much shade as your screen may produce. Then what?

I am not totally clear on the "screen". How much traffic does your dirt road get? Is there a realistic need for privacy, or do you just want a sense of separation or punctuation between the public and the private?

I think you would benefit from getting into the car and driving around and looking at others' plantings in similar situations. Find ones that appeal to you and take photos. Think about what appeals - the mix of plantings, the foliage color and texture, the level of screening, etc. Do you want a line of trees like the classic row of sugar maples that line the roads all over NH? Are you envisioning a border of shrubs or a mix of trees and shrubs more similar to what is near the house?

I think you will have to choose between seeing the roadside garden from the house and having a privacy screen since the plants by the road are close enough to the road itself so that by definition if you screen the road you will be screening the garden. Can you live with just seeing the roadside gardens as you come home and leave home? Or take walks out there? Or move some of them to where you can see them from the house, to the house side of the screen? Everything I see there (daffodils, hosta, Siberian iris) can be divided.

Practically you have a limited area to plant since you can't plant woody plants out by the road due to snow removal, and you can't plant woodies anywhere near the septic if you want it to continue to function well, so keep that in mind, that you will want to plant closer to the rock wall than to the septic. Depending on the level of screening you decide you want and the specific plants, creating a separate bed with your woody plants and easy care groundcovers of some type with mulch to keep down weeds may be the way to go, but until more specific decisions are made, you won't know which is most practical and effective.

"We have no sprinkler system and don't want to add one." Be aware that you will need to water new plantings regularly for the first growing season, and perhaps into the second one if it is unusually dry, so invest in hoses.

"more environmentally friendly, easier to maintain, and better looking" One possibility is to overseed part or all of the lawn with native grasses such as little bluestem, Eragrostis spectabilis (purple love grass), etc. along with some hardy perennials that can survive in a field such as lupine and daisies. It will need mowing with something like a brushhog about once a month to keep out woody plants, but can be lovely. Realistically, lawn or field is always going to be the easiest to maintain since all you have to do is mow.

It sounds like you have voles as well as deer, so that will need to be kept in mind when deciding on specific plants. Once you have done your field trips and put thought into some more specific goals and what appeals to you, come back again with some examples to get more specific design and plant suggestions. Early fall is a great time to plant in NH, so I would make that your goal timewise. If you plant now, a good chunk of your summer will be devoted to watering.

@yardvaark and @NHBabs, thank you for taking the time to respond. Your questions are excellent, and are the main reason I'm here. Answering them forces me to define what I mean.

Privacy: the road gets very little traffic during the week but an astonishing amount on the weekend. We'd like a bit of a screen so that when we're outside in our PJ's, or when we're moving through the house at night, we're not on full display if someone happens to be walking their dog. We don't want anything as dense as a row of arborvitae but we do need the 'protection' in winter as well as summer. If possible, I don't want to block what little light come into the front of the house.

This morning, I took some pictures from the road, and we don't need something really tall. The height of that small evergreen in the front is tall enough, I think. It's about 10-12' tall.

Better Looking: we'd like to break up the expanse of the yard. It's a gas guzzler with no ROI. Even if it were green and healthy it's still boring. We were thinking between 1 and 3 trees - autumn blaze maple, gingko autumn gold, and autumn brilliance serviceberry perhaps - plus a few shrubs to block lower sight-lines - ancot smokebush, sand cherry or black lace sambucus, viburnum blue muffin, arctic fire dogwood, and/or witch hazel. Food/medicine plants would be a plus.

#yardvaark identified my main concern - where do we place them so that the shade does not compromise the existing plants or the new ones?

If we put a maple in the area between the septic and the daffodils, will the daffodils die? What about the huge fern behind them? Will the grass underneath it improve or decline? How far from the septic does the tree have to be? How far from the road? Do we have room for 3 trees or should we limit it to 1 plus a few shrubs? If good design prefers odd numbers (for me it does) do I 'count' the small evergreen and put in 2 trees? Do the trees we've chosen preclude the shrubs? Is there another solution I haven't thought of?

I would not mind moving the plants in front of the rock wall - in fact I would prefer to - but DH won't agree to anything that makes mowing harder. Where they are now, they're out of his way. If I propose moving them and he has to use an edger, he'll balk.

We bought the house 3 years ago, as our 'forever home,' and expect to be here for the next 20. We're downsizing in every respect, including income, and need to do this slowly. Although I dislike much of the existing landscaping, we can't afford to change everything and need to protect the parts we like. We've been looking for inspiration around us but haven't found much. The only homes we like appear to have been here for ages and the plants grew up around them.

Neither of us likes a manicured look, but it should be 'designed'. I think there should be a mix of shapes, sizes and colors in both the plants themselves and their foliage, and they need to intertwine. I like an overgrown look with a surprise here and there. I even like 'weeds' if they're the right size, shape and color.... Everything should be curved - no grids or straight lines. Year-round interest would be nice. I have pictures of our previous homes but they're so different I'm not sure they're relevant. I know I can never have anything that beautiful here and it's depressing.

Heights are important. Taller should be in back, centered, or off to one side and gradually taper down. Sides should be balanced but not symmetrical. I NEED variety - tall, small, broad, narrow, big leaves, small leaves, spiky, feathery, and glossy. A row of all-the-same is OK if it curves (or creates an archway) but I don't think we have a place for that kind of arrangement.

What we have now is a procession of mounds, all with similar leaves, and we hate that! We will change it, eventually, but the bones - the trees - should come first, shouldn't they?

Favorite color combinations are purple, blue, fuchsia, orange, deep yellow, white, and chartreuse. I love variegated leaves and hot colors with lots of contrast interspersed with cool blues and whites. Not crazy about pastels (except lavender) or bluish-reds and really hate peach. DH likes flowers, I prefer to use colorful foliage that doesn't need deadheading and doesn't fade.

Favorite plants: it's not so much what as which cultivar and where it's positioned. Any plant can be beautiful in the right setting.

I LOVE evergreens, japanese maples, hollyhocks, variegated hostas, iris, fountain grass (especially red), coreopsis, ligularia, snap dragons, poppies, jacob's ladder, lamium, ferns and yucca; also smokebush, rhododendrons, hydrangea, azaleas, lilacs, sedum, vinca, ivy, pulmonaria, and huchera. My favorite annuals are pansies, petunias, marigolds, coleus, potato vine, canna lilies, colocasia, and palms. Unfortunately, deer love many of these, too.

DH says he likes gardening but what he really likes are gadgets and machines so he'll do tilling, pruning, and leaf blowing but weeding and deadheading never gets done. It's best if they're incorporated into the design. He doesn't mind watering to help a plant get established but we prefer to use native species that will thrive long term without supplemental water. We're building a hugelkultur behind the house and may add one to the front if it's successful.

@NHBabs, I love your idea of using purple lovegrass as a ground cover! Is it vole-proof? We also have grubs, chipmunks, bear and the occasional flock of wild turkeys.

Our property seems to be a bird haven and we want to promote that. Last year we had 7 bird's nests on our back deck and at least 3 (that we knew of) on the front porch. The area by the side door is our 'bird sanctuary' where dozens come to bathe. Trees/shrubs that are bird friendly would be great. However, poplar and other cultivars which are moth friendly are not welcome.

@NHBabs, are you a landscape architect? I like your ideas....

View from the road as you pass in front of the house (taken in the morning so the front gets sun all day):

Notice how the tree blocks the upper windows in that last pic?

Location of septic:

View from the front of the house:

And from my office window:

If the plants by the rock wall were moved closer to the house, I'd be able to see them better....

Yardvaark is one of the pros on this list. I am a gardener who does design for myself and occasionally friends, but have a good mental plant palette for this area and have done a lot of reading on design and visited a lot of gardens, arboreta, etc. over the years.

The purple love grass is fine with voles . . . we have enough of them that they've killed a bunch of plants, and when out walking in the field or woods, or when DH is mowing, we see them bouncing along ahead of us. The Eragrostis spectabilis does just fine. If you don't mow past mid- to late July, it's a stunner in the early fall as it goes to seed. This photo has some darker, taller patches of little blue stem along the edges of the purple love grass.

"sand cherry or black lace sambucus, viburnum blue muffin" I'm just north of Concord and have found all of these to have issues with disease or insects, so poor choices in our area. The rest of your list should be fine.

There's a plant swap in Goffstown (near Manchester) tomorrow morning if you want to see a gorgeous NH garden and meet other local gardeners. Feel free to add a comment on the post I linked to let T2D know you will be there. Or feel free to send me a message from my page if you want to visit here to get some ideas and talk specific plants, edging styles, etc. I have several large mixed borders that might give you some ideas, and T2D who is hosting the plant swap has extensive mixed borders also to give ideas. Much easier for me than posting a ton of photos or typing plant names. Or you can look at this thread on shrub borders where I've posted a bunch of photos of one of my beds and talked about plant selection and planning.

I would plan to put a large bed out by the road with either a straight edge to echo the straight stone wall or a long single curve to give the lawn a clean shape - basically make a large bed that extends from out by the road to 10'- 12' to the house side of the rock wall, so DH doesn't have to edge & mow around the rock wall. Don't plant in rows, and having one of those wavy bed edges is distracting and a pain to maintain; mulch will be your friend until everything grows in. Edge it with a buried edging of plastic or metal with a mowing strip of brick or patio block just inside the bed for the mower wheels to run on so that the mower can maintain the edge, and think about the shape of the lawn you will be creating. I'd be inclined to put your large trees over to the sides (perhaps a trio of ginkgos over toward the driveway or even on the other side of the drive if there's space) and a large maple on the right side. Then a couple of staggered layers of shrubs across the center that are 6'-12', a combination of densely twiggy deciduous and evergreen to give year-round shelter. If the sun rises behind the house, I wouldn't worry too much about shade since the sun presumably sets across the road, so most things will continue to get at least half day sun for a number of years. You can easily divide and move daffs to spots out by the road and closer to the front of the bed.

I would consider separating the lawn from other landscape planting areas in a general scheme along these lines, shrinking or expanding it to suit your requirements.

It is not possible to create a well thought out landscape such that every existing plant is important and worthy of protection at all cost. The large plants that have a job to do are at the top of the food chain and the smaller plants must adapt to them. Trees must go where they need to go and other plants might need to be moved in order for the whole plan to make sense and work properly.

You have a beautiful house and setting. i think shrubs by the road would give you all the privacy you need, and not necessarily dense ones. I have now lived in several houses where my first thought was to screen the road completely but came to like having some visual connection to it, both to see an occasional car drive by (even wave!) and for passersbys to see twinkling lights in the distance. Where I live now I am completely hidden from view and no one will know I am dead for a week. Babs' idea of a meadow in place of lawn is great. Birdhouses on poles would enhance the look.

@NHBabs, I would LOVE to attend the plant swap! Don't know if I'll make
it, though, as I woke up with a migraine. I posted on the forum.
Maybe I can make the next one.

@kitasei, that's exactly what I'm trying to do! We don't want to be totally cut off from the road, just make it more difficult for a passerby to see into the house.

@Yardvaark, I agree. I'm not trying to protect all the existing plants, only the ones I'd like to keep.

If we convert the lawn to a meadow, there would be no point in creating beds, would there? Wouldn't the meadow plants eventually end up in the beds, or create a weeding nightmare, especially the grasses if they aren't being mowed?

Landscapes are dynamic. Conditions change as plants -- especially trees -- grow. I was implying that some of the plants that you wish to protect may need to be relocated. They will not all be in the right place after you add trees.

Your house is quite a good distance back from the road - I wouldn't think privacy screening to be a major issue at all. Unless folks are stopping with binoculars!!

An assortment of mid-sized shrubs along the road/rocked area would suffice. And then define the interior bedline and replace the hostas and bulbs on the interior portion. And maybe include the bedline to include the small conifer as well......it looks a bit of an afterthought planted out there all on its own.

And I'd leave the lawn in place to cover the septic field. It really is the best and most low maintenance choice for that situation.

Wow, @mad_gallica, interesting info on meadows! Yeah, the more I think about it, the more obvious it becomes that we need to relocate those plants.

@gardengal48. we're not as far as it appears in the pictures. We have lots of people walking their dogs, and kids on bikes, and I figure that if I can see them clearly, they can also see me.