I have too much lawn to get rid of, besides I like the green altho I know why many of you would rather not spend all your time mowing. As far as new beds in grass, I tried bringing back the annual borders in the orchard - started three years ago. Ugh. This Spring I give up. I'm letting them go back to grass and weeds, I haven't the patience for all that weeding and such. Instead I did plant a few new flowering shrubs in place of the annuals and am allowing the perennials to stay. Some of the perennials are part of the original borders of many years ago. However, I do love seeing flower borders in other people's gardens

I have a ponytail palm in my yard doing fine. But it's planted near the house in a corner that's sheltered and gets more water than the rest of my yard. I have no idea if that makes a difference or not.

Ed, the reason I asked why you wanted to get rid of the bermuda is that some people are misinformed about it and think they will gain something that is impossible by changing. Before complaining about the clay, and especially if you're going to use clay as an excuse, spend $25 for a soil test from Logan Labs. 95% (seriously) of the people coming to this forum claiming to have clay do not have clay. They have a mixture of salts in their soil that makes the soil act like clay. Usually it is easy enough to compensate for the salt imbalance and restore the non-clay workability to the soil. Look at a few of the soil test posts on this forum and read the replies from morpheuspa. You get much more from a Logan Labs soil test than you can ever get from a local county or state soil test. Even if it turns out you do have clay, you do not need additional topsoil. Adding topsoil with seed and even topdressing with topsoil for no good reason has become common around the country. Here is a picture of the effect of topdressing 1/4 inch every year for 40 years... The soil is piled up so high they had to put in landscaping borders to keep it from washing onto the concrete and street. The only reason to add topsoil is if you have a low spot you need to fill. Your soil chemistry can almost always be corrected with the $25 soil test and the soil biology can be corrected with occasional doses of organic fertilizer. Adding compost is an expensive and back breaking way to get the same effect as adding organic fertilizer. In my neighborhood at local prices I can fertilize 15 times before it costs as much as one dose of compost. And before suggesting you use fertilizer when you seed, I would wait and see what the soil test tells you about what fertilizer you need. Certainly organic fertilizer can be used any time, but if you need specific blasts of other micro or macro nutrients, only the soil test will tell you. Hopefully you can get the soil tuned up perfectly before you get around to seeding.

Gorgeous pics, PK! Lauren, I'm just southeast of you In Waxahachie. I have full southwestern sun in front & part shade in back & on one side. The other side is "ungardenable". Just a narrow strip between the house & the neighbor's wood fence, it's just a walkway for me & a nursery for poison ivy & trumpet vine! I started along the sidewalk & expanded from there; seems like it keeps me from straying too far, messing up proportions, & having to undo & re-do. I put a rosemary on each side of the sidewalk close to the front door; it's evergreen & it smells like Christmas when I get the mail! There are nandinas at the corner of the house, softening the sharp corner, & right now they're at their best, still green & loaded with red berries. Along the side next to the neighbor I put 3 Lady Banks roses, as a hedge of flowering shrubs. They do get sparse in the winter but they never have gone totally bald. There's a Martha Gonzales rose on each side of the sidewalk where it intersects with the public sidewalk that defines the "hellstrip". They're compact, pretty much evergreen, & they have gorgeous blue-green foliage & burgundy stems, & the flowers are a bright cheery red. I widened the beds on the front & side of the house, & they have salvias, mums, flame acanthus, lemon mint (I love it for the "makes you smile" fragrance, but it does spread!), old irises, mistflower, a couple of crinums for proportion, & a lot of "tote & plop" plants, the ones you can't resist bringing home, & then you have to tote them around until you spy a bit of earth where you can plop them! Along the sidewalk leading to the Marthas, there are dusty miller, obedient plant, datura for proportion/contrast, & a few dwarf cannas that I may move this spring...it seems like they're more backyard flowers than front yard. Along the hellstrip on the northeast, I have roses, crinums, tons of irises, & some tall Mexican petunias that have to be watched lest they take over the universe but which bloom in the summer when everything else suffers in the heat. In the shadier areas, there are cast iron plant, Jewel of Opar, pigeonberry, & probably some other stuff that I can't remember right now! Although my little plastic wading pools are no comparison to PK's (I pile up mulch around them & pretend I can't see the blue plastic), I have 2 of them in the back, one for bog plants & one for water garden plants. At the corner, on the small wedge-shaped area defined by 2 streets & the intersection of the 2 sidewalks, there are red yucca, salvia, a four o'clock, & a big group of irises, Scattered throughout the whole place are paperwhites, narcissus, lycoris radiate, etc. Between all of this, I'm working diligently to replace the huge brittle old hackberries with juniper, olive, gingko, crepe myrtle, & loquat, & to lay down brick pathways. The things I've learned about cottage gardens & other lawn-less gardens are: If you possibly can, draw your lot on paper, sketching in the house, fences, sidewalks, utility areas (I keep the compost pile & the trash can in the narrow strip by the neighbor!). Draw in pathways where you generally walk, & keep those areas clear. You will get tired of walking around a planting area to take out the trash! I just happen to know this. Make a list of some things you like, & color code the list for the environments those things need, such as shade or sun, & their mature size (do as I say, not as I did: I'm the person who once planted a Mermaid rose beneath the eaves!). This will also keep you from planting bur oaks beneath electric lines. I haven't done that one, but it broke my heart to see the electric company's "trimmers" mutilating 100-year-old oak trees in my neighborhood, cutting big "V"s in the middle... Pencil in some things, such as rosemary by the front door, lemon mint by the back gate, bird feeders where you can see them from the window you use most-such as over the kitchen sink or in front of the computer desk. Pick long-lived plants, or plants that self-seed, when you can. Plant irises where they can be mulchless, & where the neighbor's magnificent century-old oak tree won't shower them with bushels of leaves every autumn. Plant the things that need more attention close to where you will see them every day. Make room for a sitting/tea-drinking/visiting area, including a table & enough space to scoot your chair back without bumping a flowerbed or smacking the edging. Enjoy your garden, engage with it, play with it, have fun!