For one thing, a short ramp would take care of the door area - make for ease of lawn mowers, wheel barrows, etc. An arrangement of shrubs (for shade or sun as your conditions allow) would take care of the rest. Lattice would look makeshift and cheesey, I think. If you get sun and barberry isn't on the invasive list where you live - the Crimson Pygmy variety is a beautifully colored small shrub, Very inexpensive from places like Walmart's garden centers in the spring. Potentilla Fruticosa or any of the smaller variety spireas are also nice. All are deciduous, though.

Concur with Loger. Also have done a lot of concrete work and at this point in my life, I hire someone to do it. What kind of shed are you building and size? What do you intend storing there? e.g. The concrete floor in my barn has to stand up to Ag tractors and occasionally a dozer being parked in there. A back yard shed may see a 500 lb. LT/GT and other odds and ends. Personally, for a "shed" I'd be looking at 3/4" or 1" plywood, pressure treated or not, depending. Especially if you're "carpentering" it up yourself, easy enough to incorporate the floor and subfloor into your plan. I do like "solon" tubes (round reinforced cardboard tube inserted into a post hole and filled with concrete with upright inserted and plumb) for this type of project. Also use Pressure treated wood where it's in contact with the ground. A lot of pole barns in this area have gravel floors, very forgiving for equiptment storage. Hard packed dirt also works well if $$ are an issue. Good luck, Ev

The first and most important measurement is the actual base size of the shed, after which, you can go out with a border, which is always a good idea. Some of the other regulars on the this forum will be tired of reading my critter lecture but I'll repeat it for you anyway. Unless they are on concrete foundations, sheds are an open invite to every burrowing critter around, so to prevent any from getting in, lay 2 ft. wide 1/2" mesh hardware cloth all along the perimeter of the shed base, with several inches under the base and rest out, under the gravel. Stake the outside edges of the wire tightly, to prevent the smallest vole from getting under it. Critters always dig at the base of a structure and don't know to back off and seek the outside edge. Once they run into the wire, they may try another spot, but eventually, will just give up and leave, and less than 100 ft. of hardware cloth up front beats trying to smoke them out later. We learned this the hard way, after a groung hog dug though a foot of 2" gravel to set up houskeeping under one of our sheds. We had to move the shed and redo the foundation under it to fill in the mess it left and every time I think of easy it would have been to prevent the need, I cringe, and get onto my soapbox.;)

As others have experienced, my recently-purchased, 19th century farmhouse has a stone foundation in need of repair. I'm chatty, so grab a snack and sit back for some light reading. ;) Of the 3 basement rooms, the east room is not parged, and the floor gets wet after it rains. The thing is, we accidentally discovered the south walls are hollow. Yes. Hollow. So far, we've repaired an approx. 3' x 4' area of hollow, interior foundation wall that we could easily access. We knew there'd be more. (I agree that parging only serves to hide problems.) Sure, the mortar is nothing more than sand, in much of the south walls and the west corners. But when we started pulling away the loose stones, we found huge voids within the foundation. Using stones and cement/mortar, we repaired the voids as best we could. We were feeling pretty proud of ourselves, for finding the exterior sources of the water problems, correcting them, and then fixing the foundation voids.) (When we first moved-in, I spent about 100 hrs in the one, non-parged room in the basement, brushing the surface and pointing every little gap.) We also painstakingly went around the above-ground exterior foundation, and filled-in any obvious gaps, and redirected downspouts and other water purge pipes. (As renovations continue, a new roof and gutters will be installed appropriately.) But here's what happened (and why my urgency to get this solidified ASAP)... I like my music and movies. I'm very hard on subwoofers. The last one was 400W, and began deteriorating a few months ago. I lived without one due to the numerous renovation projects going on in the house. (We've lightened the house substantially, I suspect, by removing all the heavy, heavy plaster & lathe - double layers, in places - to lightweight drywall, as we reconfigured everything.) So, as a kind of treat, once the home theatre was able to be set-up again, my husband bought a bigger, better, badder subwoofer for me. I now have 650W of goodness at my disposal. Yippee! But, as always in life, there are pros and cons to everything. The thing is, the west basement room has yet to be addressed, and sits directly under the new sub. After extended play at delicious levels, I went to the basement...just to see if there were any repercussions (pardon the pun). Frighteningly, there was some evidence of surface degradation. i.e. There was some sand/mortar, parge, and some small rocks on the floor. As best I can tell, the thumping bass dislodged them (although I can't be 100% sure, as I didn't check first, and we had similar results elsewhere, when doing the main floor flooring). Again, here's the thing... I took my super-skinny pointing tool and poked various spots on the interior foundation wall under the subwoofer. When it easily went all the way in, I tried a longer length of stiff electrical wiring. It went in a foot, with ease. A little freaked out, I went back to the middle basement room, where we'd repaired part of the wall. The untouched areas are parged, so it's not easy to find gaps to test. Then, just under the repaired area, I tried a space just big enough for the pointing tool, and it wet all the way in. Our exterior, south wall of the house is covered in ivy. A neighbour informed us that, a few years ago, the (brick) wall collapsed inward. The repairs are only evident once the ivy dies away in winter. However, it doesn't appear the foundation collapsed, or was affected by the collapse. But with that parge and paint, who knows? Soooooo... As I get down and dirty with more urgency in wire brushing and re-pointing, any expert thoughts, recommendations, pro tips? (And no...the foundation needs to be strong enough to handle the subwoofer, as that bad boy's not going anywhere.) ;) Until now, I'd always kind of felt a little invincible, in that the house has faced countless storms and even some minor earthquakes over its century+ life. There even used to be a railroad across our front lawn, not 75' from the front porch. Surely, a little truck rumbling, thunderstorm, or occasional subwoofer use couldn't hurt it. Now, I'm nervous. :O