Grading for a walkout is more complicated than most other landscapes. Not all designers have the experience to do a good job on them. Should you choose to do the design yourself, or perhaps want to evaluate what your designer has planned, I have some suggestions. Be warned, it's a lot of work. Scaled drawings will be needed; a plan view of the entire property and vertical views of both routes of the front to back perimeter. There are some discussions of plan view drawings on this forum, so I will skip for now to the vertical views. The graphic below is one suitable for grade planning. Note that the scale is exaggerated with one small square representing 4 ft of horizontal distance, but only 2 ft of vertical distance. Without detailed measurements, the graphic is only an approximation of what Nick may really have. Of the 9 to 9.5 ft vertical transition common to this house type, Nick has about a 2ft drop from the front entry to grade leaving about 7 to 7.5 feet to get to the back grade. My guess of the current grading is shown by the irregular brown line which is probably around a 22 to 28% slope. Several treatments are shown with other colored lines. Where the house foundation wraps around the back and fill can be place against it, the cheapest solution is that shown in green. The result is an easy to mow lawn and beds not subject to erosion. The side slope across the front of the house is more difficult to make look good and more surface drainage is diverted to the back. Another solution shown in blue uses two short walls to reduce the slope. Short walls can be a DIY project and the grade in front is held to a minimum slope. The purple line is a constant grade from entry to back house corner; cheap but steeper. The red line is one of many big ticket wall treatments possible. This can result in a great looking landscape that produces the largest amount of high use flat property. As the perimeter treatment is evaluated, it is compared with plan view to establish the the final grading and drainage.

With that extensive a project in mind, why don't you hire a design professional? Not only will they be able to easily tackle any hardscaping issues (landing, path and stairs) but they can bring to life what is essentially a very boring blank slate at this point in time. If you admittedly know nothing about plants and gardening, why go into this project with the potential of a lot of costly trail and error mistakes? In many cases, a designer will prepare a full design for you to follow DIY at your convenience OR you can opt to hire all (or part) of the work out. You can be as hands-on - or off - as you wish :-) I've linked you to the NY chapter of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers. This is one of the best referral services for landscape design professionals. Here is a link that might be useful: APLD - NY

Low voltage lighting is great but it is commonly done incorrectly. Often gets assoiciated with a form of wiring that is simple and easy to do but it a lot of cases, it is more difficult than 120 volt circuits. To do it right I would use the industrial stainless steel transformer timer boxes. These are typically around $250 as to the $60 home depot plastic ones. They are necessary especially when lighting a house. Another situation is planning the wiring. A big mistake is "Well its low voltage so I don't need a big wire" Truth is, you need a bigger wire. Good to always use 12 gauge landscape cable but if the line is over 75 feet, have to go up to 10. A run really far like across a back yard is often 8 gauge wire. You also can't just run every light of one line. You typically run 4 seperate lines on a large installation. Put the first section of lights on the 1st section, 25 feet away start using the 2nd line, another 25 feet use the 3rd line. The fancy trasformer has multiple outputs, 12 volt, 13, 14, 15, and 16 volt. If the line is supplying lights that are on the other side of the house, use the 16 volt connection. That way by the time the electricity makes it to the lights, it looses 4 volts but still has the needed 12 volts to light up the light properly. I have seen many houses with bright lights on the left and dark on the right, that is because they use the standard home depot transformers, or don't plan the wiring layout. I've seen a lot of installers use underground well lights to light the house itself rather than the stick in the ground floods. They usually leave the wells up a bit so they dont get covered with mulch. But the well lights give a nice wide lighting angle. Its best to pick peices of the landscape like certain shrubs to light as to broad flood lighting. If the entire area is flooded, it looks more like security light than designer lighting. Just like in a living room, often artwork is lit with cans as to big fluoresent lights filling the entire room with gaudy light. Path way lights are nice too but I think it looks better to use a minimal ammount of high quality expensive fixtures as to a bunch of tiered path lights from home depot that you see in millions of yards in the US. There are really nice path lights out there that are made of brass, copper, fancy metal. Might try www.ccl-light.com They have a great variety of higher quality fixtueres. They also carry the stainless steel transformers and large spools of landscape wire. They also carry a lot of surface mount deck lights, lights to light the house, well lights. The well lights would be good for both lighting the house but also for trees. Looks a lot neater when they are level with the ground than a flood light on a stake. You'll probably want one transformer for the back yard and one for the front. Also could put one on the left side yard and one on the right and put both front yard and back yard left lights on one and backyard/front yard right lights on the other. Just whichever divides out the best. Or if you don't have a lot of lights in the back yard, you may beable to put the entire system on one trasformer. They have them in all different sizes, just sometimes it is easier to bring the transformers close to where the lighting is to avoid lots of runs of cable (which is not cheap) Glad your looking into, landscape lights are great and good ones will last a long time and add value to the home. A big kit in a box from homedepot usually doesn't to the trick though :)

A couple of notes: - You don’t actually want to plant as densely or as close to the walk as in Doug’s sketch or in three years you will need to do a lot of pruning and in 5 or 8 you will be ripping out plants and starting all over again with many of them. Add large pots or a birdbath or art or annuals while you wait for some of your woody plants to put on size. - Whatever you plant needs to be sized appropriately for it ultimate growth. Plant tags often give plant sizes at an unrealistic 5 years, so be sure to look up on a reputable website such as the Missouri Botanic Garden’s Plantfinder to find the actual expected size. - You have a big overhang that creates a rain shadow that will always be dry without irrigation. Be sure to plan on irrigation for anything within that rain shadow. Regardless, don’t plant anything so close that it will grow to within a foot or so of the house. - Wider steps are great to make a welcoming entry. - Notice in both sketches that the plants in front of the windows are lower with taller plants framing it or placed further down the slope to not block the windows. - Plan to have some of your plants evergreen for a winter presence and some with either colored foliage or flowers for interest. - Sod or hydro seed the lawn at the appropriate time of year for your area which may be now.