I don't know what it would take to keep marauding animals a birds away.
You’ve got a lot of work ahead of you!
Let me suggest when you replace stuff try to find a substitute that actually gives you food in return. Instead of little dwarf maples, try dwarf fruit trees. Instead of box hedges, try blueberry or cherry bushes. Upright blackberries do great against a fence as long as they have 7+ hrs of sunlight. The trailing berries also trellis nicely against a chain link fence or some equivalent. Tomatoes and beans or peas (the climbing kind) like to be trellised as well.
I do all this plus my ‘groundcover’ plants are strawberries. I put dwarf pepper plants in amongst my plantings too. Some of those only get about 18” tall. You could easily turn a suburban ‘landscaped yard’ into several hundred square feet of food bearing garden with a bit of effort. And without your neighbors having a clue unless they walk right up to your house. There are lots of dwarf or container varieties of most veggies now.
Since you’re starting anew, try this link:
http://www.rosalindcreasy.com/
She’s got some good ideas and pics. Searching for ‘edible landscaping’ will get you a website that sells plants for this purpose (I have no idea if they’re a reputable business or not) but also other links with pics and ideas. I lived in NJ for a while and if I were paying NJ property taxes I’d be darned sure I got something out of that!
Just a suggestion.
I like the idea of growing food, I’ve done herbs for the last few years and I did tomatoes when we live in Bayonne, the only thing that makes me hesitate here are the critters.
I grew up in NYC and have never lived in the suburbs before now. (Hubby grew up on Long Island, but pretty close to the city.)
To me, this is almost like a wilderness. We’ve actually had deer in sight of our backyard and we’ve got possums and racoons and creatures like that.
And, our soil is dreadful, it’s pretty much toxic it seems.
Hubby is saying that after the house is lifted he wants to put in sort of huge planters, so I think we could do veggies and stuff like that.
I love the idea of fruit trees. I’ve never wanted to be a farmer, but I was always open to the idea of an orchard!
Our little ranch house is going to be about 5 feet up in the air, so we are going to have to re-do the whole landscape.
I don't know what it would take to keep marauding animals a birds away.