Our lot can be seen as divided 2/3 / 1/3. The house sits in the furthest forward left corner of the 2/3 section and that's the garden we've been working with. The rightmost 1/3 was kept as a dog run by the previous owners. They overplanted trees that were never maintained and there was a hideous chain link fence.

In a fit of spring energy we had the trees taken out (one was a very tall skinny bradford pear at a scary lean towards the house, one was a stunted plum that didn't get any light, one was a sweet gum that no one liked, and one was dead.)

Now we're working on landscaping the upper yard.

Here's the view from the bottom-left deck off the house, looking up to the upper right corner (the pine is new and is the upper rightmost corner.) This is the view we're working on.

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This is looking down from the upper right corner along the property line. The property line is somewhere in the middle of the retaining wall. The previous owners put up 6ft wood fence along the back of the property then jogged it in (to the left in the photo) and that's where the chain link started.

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This is the retaining wall. The black fence is the neighbor's; once the dumpster goes away this will be a small parking area for the 4 downslope townhouses they built.

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There are 3 possibilities:

1) run 6ft fence from behind the corner pine to the existing post, leaving a zig-zag there.

2) run 8ft fence from behind the corner pine to meet up with the neighbor's black fence; remove the jogged-in piece, and plant lots of trailing ivy and vines over the exposed wall.

3) run fence along the whole space but take out the jogged-in piece and smooth the fence line to as close to the retaining wall as possible.

My partner says:

#1 - clean, simple, easy.

#2 - the retaining wall is hideous

#3 - won't look different in the end from #1 but more work.

I say:

#1 - if we can keep the perception of a continuous line across the back then the yard will look connected and much larger. The zig zag wrecks that.

#2 - My first idea, and all I can see is this coolness:


I think it would also make it feel very open.

#3 - If the wall _is_ in fact hideious, then smoothing out the line would be better than #1

Any and all comments or suggestions would be helpful, and no need to be tactful if you think one or more are stupid and ugly :)