Sunbum, one of the best ways to get to the right question is to ask yourself "what do I want this landscaping to achieve?" It's actually a question that suits design decisions in general, from paint colours to fashion. Ink has provided the clue to getting there with his observation that the garage is the prominent feature of your house, visually dominating the house itself, and that this is exacerbated by it being built at the high end of the lot. People with a design sensibility do tend to have an aversion to the "welcome to my garage look." The flip side of "welcome to my garage" is "where the heck is the front door?" and probably (I don't have a house like that so don't know) kind of an unpleasant feeling for people who approach the house, especially after dark. Of course, if you enter through the garage and never order pizza, perhaps this is not an issue :-) So the question you could start with is "does that bother me?" By chance, the sample photoshop that Goldie has provided also has that design feature; actually even more so, where the house is subsidiary to the garage. Of course, the contrast with yours is that your garage at least has a side entry. And you know, maybe people don't mind this look so much, now that millions of people have it. But still, there seems to be some effort being made to make the house attractive, so it does make sense that the landscaping would try to de-emphasize the garage and give the house more prominence. Now, my amateur design skills fall down at the question of "just how do we accomplish that?" but there Goldie's design actually provides a hint... at least, I think shows the effect that landscape design can have. While it is a pretty layout and very tidily done and maintained, I think it exacerbates rather than solves the problem. I stand to be corrected, but here's my rationale. A couple of months ago, someone posted a house for suggestions that was very different from this, but with an instructive element. The house was very close to the street and the lawn was an inverted U shape, with the bottom of the U being closest to the house. I don't remember what the OP question was, but Laag made the point that the lawn shape functioned to visually elongate the yard and thus to make the front yard seem as big as it was going to. Goldie's design puts a similar lawn shape - with a dominant line paralleling the driveway, thus more or less forming the U - in front of the already receding house. It is unfortunate that the photo angle of the later pictures is lower, but it almost seems in the actual installation that the house appears if anything further away from the street than in the photoshop. You may be somewhat protected from the full force of this effect by the line of your sidewalk, but the point remains that the lawn shape is a design element that will have an effect on how the two parts of the building are perceived. My expertise is sorely exceeded by the task of compensating for the fact that the house is on the downhill side, but hopefully you get the point that landscape can affect how the building is perceived - and decide whether you want to play with this element (vs just saying, "yeah, that's how the house is, so what?"). I do hope others with more expertise can chime in to at least explain what principles might be applied. KarinL PS: DrtyGrl, see what happens when you encourage me: I keep talking :-) PPS: Sunbum, you should also read the two threads by v1rtu0s1ty, you might enjoy them. Copy and paste his name into the search field to make a bunch of his threads come up, they are always instructive. PPPS: Or if all you still want is shrub suggestions for the existing beds, you can just sneak off to the local nursery to ask for advice, and ignore us all :-) Here is a link that might be useful: Virtuosity's thread on shape of planting bed

I'm gonna throw my two cents' in here since I am a former Master Gardener (let my certification lapse because the local group was like a garden club), and as a landscape designer, I've done work with a community group to landscape the entrance to their neighborhood. All the above posts are correct about the Master Gardener program. Some Master Gardeners are professionals, but the MG certification is a part of their volunteer life. MGs aren't typically trained in design, although some clearly have a talent for it. You'll more likely get advice on plant selection and prepping the site, but you'll still need a design, and for that you should turn to an LD. Having done a project like what you're needing, I have to say it was probably one of the least pleasant experiences of my professional life, and here's why: there were way too many chiefs and not near enough indians in the community group, there wasn't a clearly defined "go-to" person on the committee, they expected a discount because they were a community group (but not a non-profit), and the day of the installation I had very well-intentioned community members bringing in their leftover lantana or newly dug-up iris bulbs or a fern that was inappropriate for the site... You get the picture. I learned a lot from that job, even though I had a clearly defined contract with the group as to who was doing what and what it would cost. My advice is to have ONE person from your group and one person only that deals directly with the designer. Figure out what your budget is, don't expect freebies from a professional, organize your volunteer group well, and respect the time of the designer. Sign your contract promptly and return with the necessary deposit. On the day of installation, please do not allow your community/committee members to try to change the design or throw in extra plants that won't work. Trust the professional advice of your designer. I learned to be more clearly defined in my work and communications with clients, and to keep boundaries carefully drawn. It can be a great community experience for everyone involved, as long as everyone involved is respectful of boundaries and communicates clearly. good luck!

You will have to seek a landscape designer with the same interests as you. Do some research on wildlife friendly landscaping so that you know what kind of language to use when interviewing people and discussing your needs. There are thousands of websites and hundreds of wonderful books that you can browse. I have to laugh at the way you worded your first sentence:"When people get landscape plans created are those creating the plans designing it around what looks nice or what will attract wildlife?" It isn't an 'either/or' kind of issue! You wildlife landscape can look absolutely beautiful, even traditional if you like it that way! It just boils down to the proper plant selection and the appropriate placement and combination of those plants. Wildlife friendly landscapes must have plenty of cover, habitat, food sources, open spaces, as well as plants that do not require pesticides (insecticides, fungicides, herbicides, miticides, etc.) in order to manage them. But you can have lovely trees, flowering and fruiting shrubs, annuals and perennials, and even expanses of lawn. Use a variety of resources for your information so that you can glean ideas from a wide range of experts. THEN, you can be more confidant in making sure that a landscape designer will be doing the right things.

I also want to sing Sketchup's praises. It appeared a little intimidating at first to me as a novice at 3D design, but it is very intuitive once you learn the basics. I am one of those "knows enough about design to be dangerous" sort of people and so I've been using it extensively as a tool to collaborate with my architect. When I have an idea I'll mock it up and send it over. I ended up designing all of our cabinets with it, and much of our trim/molding. Our architect ended up just exporting our cabinet models to dwg and dropping them into his CAD file for elevations. Note that you don't need Sketchup Pro for most of this... it can all be done with the free version (except dwg export/import). Where Sketchup Pro comes in is the addition of Layout, a powerful tool similar to Autocad "paper space" that lets you take orthographic projections of your models and create elevation drawings you can send to contractors. I ended up buying Pro and doing this with my cabinet drawings with my architect's encouragement. If you're just interested in mocking things up and not printing your drawings, I'm not sure you really need Pro. Sketchup has a huge ecosystem of addons. I've mostly ignored them so far with the exception of "Joint Push/Pull" which succeeds in extruding shapes where the built in one fails. I am pretty sure you could use this tool to design just about anything. Cabinet 3d model in sketchup: 2d orthographic projection in Layout for cabinet sub: