Madalyn

I'm in an Eastern Temperate Forest and am in Hardiness Zone 7.  I think my yard gets quite a lot of sun, but it's tricky to tell since it's March, and I'm afraid when the trees have leaves it will become shadier?  How do I plan for this?  I feel very intimidated about choosing spaces for new beds.  Ideally, my whole front yard would no longer be grass, but we're brand new homeowners so I think I'll have to settle for a smaller patch this first year and expand, due to not being able to spend a ton of money and also learning the ropes.  It's intimidating to know where to start in the yard.  I might make kind of a random bean-shaped bed of natives in the front yard to start.  Then, I have a very damp and shady patch in the back that I'd like to add some ground cover to.  I was thinking wild ginger and heartless foamflower.

I live in a house we recently bought in Northern New Jersey.  We like to read, eat, and watch birds in our yard.  Right now it's a lot of grass and, thankfully, many old (and healthy) trees.  We have everything from hemlocks to a Maple to a holly tree.  I'd like to eliminate a lot of our grass with colorful native grass, and turn the leftover grass into a clover lawn.  I'd also like it to feel more fairytale/magical-like in general.  The folks who lived her before us had it highly landscaped- bushes cut into shapes- the whole nine yards. As for current birds, we have five feeders and have managed to attract, house sparrows, white-throated sparrows, dark-eyed juncos, bluejays, house finches, white and red-breasted nuthatches, black-capped chickadees, cardinals, robins, and both American and fish crows.  Also, downy woodpeckers, hairy woodpeckers, red-bellied woodpeckers, and yellow-bellied sapsuckers.  The smaller birds definitely love hiding in our bushes, so putting in a lot more different kind of ground cover makes sense. During spring migration we got a few warblers- I'd love to get many more.