I've been thinking about putting in a tiny patio. A tiny place for me to sit on a bench where no one can see me. I spent ten years getting the foliage just right in my Brooklyn garden so that when I put that bench along the north fence of my far back 900 sq ft yard, I would have complete privacy. Within a week of my installing a pretty stone bench back there, my neighbor to the north cut down the hedge just behind my wee bench, and my back was exposed. Why am I telling you this?

>I suspect that we are going to have to spend a few years adjusting to get it right,

It will take *at least* ten years, like most things, and even then you will change it constantly. Gardening is a slow motion visual art. 

>Some people seem to spend a lot of their time looking at satisfying their childhood desires

Imagination has been killed, our opportunities limited. 

>we have to do whatever our group is doing, and if we don't, we are out.

We are seeing a great deal of this behavior these days. Common sense is dead.