After over 30 years developing my shade garden with water features and lots of shade plants, we had a offer on our house, that was not on the market by my daughter, she wants to turn it into a Airbnb, I already owned a smaller home that I was using as a studio and we are moving there, it’s smaller and a cottage style house that suits our needs smaller and easier to manage, it has full sun, part sun and full shade. I’m excited yet, now I have to come up with a new plan, I always wanted a rose garden honestly, but we have so much clay here that every time I planted roses there they never did well. I’m converting one of the basement rooms to seed starting with led and fluorescent lights to start perennials, this forum will be a godsend for my new endeavor, my biggest challenge is to stop my ADHD brain to stop thinking I have to have a beautiful garden in a year and plan it out properly.
Just moved from shade gardening to a location with sun
- Thread starter Wallflower
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I also want to say, in 10 years I may sell and if I create the garden I want, the neighborhood is busy families, it could be a problem for anyone not wanting to maintain landscape and watering ugg
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Trying to out guess the taste of the people who might buy your house in ten years time sounds like your ADHD brain is already in action 
Seriously, you really can't know, so why not try to create exactly what you would like to live with for the next ten years? You never know, it may be what makes the future buyer fall in love with the house.
Planning out a garden properly is a good idea, wanting to create it in a year is not. Things need to grow in harmony with one another, change and develop. A garden is an ongoing, living, thing; an always impermanent creation, that is what you should plan for, not some fixed ideal.
I live on heavy clay and one of the best things I have found to do is to burn all the lumps that hoe up in my incinerator. Smashed up a bit the resulting terracotta helps the soil drain and breath. Of course the ash from the wood I burn it with helps too and I add plenty of compost, mulch, and nitrate, but I reckon that in places I have gone from solid clay to a foot of good top soil in two years. It is easier in the veg garden where things are not permanent, but I have created ornamental beds as well.
Good luck, but most of all, enjoy it!
Seriously, you really can't know, so why not try to create exactly what you would like to live with for the next ten years? You never know, it may be what makes the future buyer fall in love with the house.
Planning out a garden properly is a good idea, wanting to create it in a year is not. Things need to grow in harmony with one another, change and develop. A garden is an ongoing, living, thing; an always impermanent creation, that is what you should plan for, not some fixed ideal.
I live on heavy clay and one of the best things I have found to do is to burn all the lumps that hoe up in my incinerator. Smashed up a bit the resulting terracotta helps the soil drain and breath. Of course the ash from the wood I burn it with helps too and I add plenty of compost, mulch, and nitrate, but I reckon that in places I have gone from solid clay to a foot of good top soil in two years. It is easier in the veg garden where things are not permanent, but I have created ornamental beds as well.
Good luck, but most of all, enjoy it!
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The only thing that allows me to grow roses in my clay is raised bed plantings. A base of manure compost topped with hardwood bark mulch is a easy start, and that way the roots can reach soil but still breathe and not drown when the rain comes.