We moved into this house about a year ago. I've been making an effort to have a mix of wild and cottage vibes for the garden, as this was our first winter I've been able to get some decent designing down. Last year was a bit of a panic as we didn't know how the sun would lay and with moving in, our planting was done really late. But this year is the year I establish hedges as even though we're in a wood no one has anything in their front gardens and not much in the rear including mine.
I put a pond in last summer after liberating a water tank out of a skip which lives in the wild part of the garden. So the plan is for the native hedging to run the length of the garden, with intermittent decorative ones like the sweet briar for the parts closer to the house.
The front of the garden is going to be the nepeta as it'll be easy to control it from spilling onto the path. It also allows people to see the front garden while giving us a bit more of an established boundary that grass alone doesn't really do.
Are there any tips or suggestions for anything I might be missing?
I'd highly recommend checking out the work done and books authored by Martin Crawford for inspiration and details. In lieu of that, here are two pictures of tables from the appendices of Creating a Forest Garden:
Please note that not all of these are native to the region, which may or may not be a deal breaker for your goals