Here we go... 11 months later... We bought a house. Still a long way off, but we closed a month ago and have been doing renovations ever since. Move-in is end of September.
Ended up with an acre and I've had a little time this week to sketch out the first tentative plan for the food forest. I tried to make everything to scale-ish. See attached.
A little key for those interested:
Green - new fence. box on south side is a dog run Fence then connects to neighbors existing fences on the SW side and N side of the property (N side to be completed after garage).
Blue - new construction, adding on to the patio with new screen room attached to pool enclosure and roofed, but open grilling area in the dog run all going in this fall (currently drawing up the plans). Box on the N side is big workshop/garage that I'm looking to do early next year.
Light Brown is mulch.
Red - existing trees that I'm keeping (others are around the property that will be removed (not doing well and/or majorly in the way). Two biggest dots are pines and the smaller dots are palms. Might have to ditch some of the palms cause they're really close to the house, but I'm gonna hack 'em back and we'll see.
Orange - canopy through shrub level stuff, all labeled (fixers are mexican sunflower and fakahatchee grass - probably technically herbaceous, but whatever). Stuff in front is just thrown in, no clue what I'm going to do there, but ornamental edibles are in order - pineapples for sure, who knows what else at this point.
Yellow - herbaceous/groundcover level stuff (don't mind my spelling on the illustration). Herbs off the screen room is a small herb garden - perhaps raised. Flowers/groundcover is just to cover the raised septic drainfield (approx septic tank location is wrong, it's actually right about where the 'Equip' is in 'Pool Equipment')
Pink - firepit area... may or may not gravel that area.
Purple - kids swingset lol
I laid it out with a few things in mind... all mulch beds will be properly curved so I don't have to get off the mower when doing the lawn. Might throw some mulch around that pine on the SW side, but didn't sketch it in. The trees lining the drive will not be mulched so I will need to use the trimmer to clean up around them - already have to do that for the ditch off the sides of the driveway anyway.
Trees are sort of haphazardly thrown in there, so that's probably going to change. Suggestions welcome. SW neighbor had some trees that shade my property a bit, but I tried to make everything get ample sun. Bananas are in that area specifically because it's lower lying and retains a bit of water (doesn't puddle or anything, but is soggy longest after rain).
Dog run fence can't go in until I tear out some misc trees/shrubbery and there's another massive grouping of that stuff where the fig and the misc herbaceous area is. I'm going to do that in a couple of weeks while they're installing our tile floor. At the same time I'm going to throw in the bamboo on the N and W sides to provide a quick privacy barrier. Then I'll paint the exterior. After we're settled in, I'm going to build out the SW corner - mulch and get trees started. I'll take care of the front yard at that point (pulling a couple of palms, maybe trying to move them to the SE corner of the dog run, on the outside. Then mulch around the pool area after the screen room is completed, ending at the herb garden. The rest on the N side will be implemented when the garage is finished next year. I'll be mixing in the herbaceous/groundcover stuff next spring and shoehorn in the fire pit project at some point in time - probably right in time for summer so we don't use it lol.