Obviously, this suggestion is schematic as I can't see all the property & am making a lot of guesses. Also, this is a "bare bones". It needs more plantings to make it truly interesting. The scale is too little and too vague to work out here. Check with county extension agency on specific plant recommendations. To be sure, you also need shade trees at back, trees left side of house/drive & probably some tree form large shrubs at perimeter other places. All of this should be laid out on a plan for it to be accurately placed. Trees 1 & 2 are a matched set of street trees. (Maybe they should match other street trees in neighborhood if they've picked good ones.) Suggestions are Red Maple, various Oaks, Ash (Fraxinus), Zelkova & things like that. If you could get a patented variety, it would definitely be worth the extra money. Tree 3 is a smaller, flowering or character tree: paperbark maple, Eastern redbud, crabapple, saucer magniolia, Japanese tree lilac, etc. Tree 4 is a specialty or character shade tree. First thing that comes to mind is Ginkgo. They take a while to get going, but they're worth the wait. Make sure to get a patented male variety...but not 'Sentry'. (The female variety is really not that horrible as long as it's not anywhere you'd walk on the fruit. It would be workable here.) Others might be tulip poplar, Brioti Horsechestnut, pin oak, Redmond Linden, Lacebark Elm. If you wanted a large specimen conifer here, reconfigure placement scheme. I would probably create planted beds of low shrubs or groundcover around most or all trees. Shrubs (green) are just to show general form. Annuals (red) Groundcover (blue) Perennials (yellow)

If your winter low temps are never below 20, count yourself in zone 8, not zone 7. I don't know what you mean by "blue bamboo" and I'm assuming "black bamboo" means Phyllostachys Nigra. Most running bamboos prefer lots of sunlight but can get by fine with three hours of afternoon sunshine. Clumping bamboos usually prefer more shade and in particular afternoon sunshine can burn them. A notable exception is Fargesia Robusta which would be an excellent choice for a clumping, non-invasive variety.

Good advice from Trisha for V. pedata. For the others, full sun would do for them all, to generalize. But if you can, I would advise aiming for somewhere with at least a little shade and humidity, not least to reduce the chances of red spider mite in a long hot summer. More specifically, the violets in your list (as opposed to the pansy types) can be planted under deciduous shrubs in full sun - so that they get all the light going in spring (when they flower), but get the shade during summer (they can take quite a lot then).

I think it's amazing this thread went on so long with no mention of St Augustine. UC Verde and all the other buffalo and prairie grasses are for full sun. Kikuyu is one of the most invasive imported pest plants short of kudzu. The others mentioned are ground covers that do not repair themselves. Dichondra will die annually from flea beetle. They wipe it out faster than you can diagnose it, but it returns from seed. Fescue, in my opinion should be formally outlawed in CA unless you live west of the 5 in San Diego and Orange counties and west of the 405 in LA. North of the 10 it can be grown on the west slopes of the coastal range, but not in the valleys. St Augustine is a real turf grass, unlike many of the alternates mentioned. It spreads to repair itself under the dog feet, is very shade tolerant, also sun tolerant, and it will crowd out other grasses when mowed at the mower's highest setting. St Aug comes as pieces of sod on a pallet. Cost is about a dollar per piece covering about 2 square feet. It spreads 10 to 15 feet per year in all directions, so if you don't cover the entire area at one time, it will take over and cover for you. St Aug takes as much water as any turf grass if you want it to remain green. If you stop watering it for more than a month, it might die completely, so it differs from other grasses in that regard. But I have revived it from beyond the grave at my my new residence in the Texas Hill Country. St Augustine is considered to be a water hog, but that is pure myth. All grasses need 1 inch of water, once a week, in the hottest heat of summer. This goes for the cool season grasses in the north and the warm season grasses in the south. In Phoenix both bermuda and St Augustine need 1 inch every 4-5 days, but in the rest of the country it only needs it once a week. This time of year in your area you should be watering 1 inch, all at once, every 2-3 weeks. The problem with fescue is it needs water 3x per week in the summer and that dries up your aquifers and lakes. Not sure why you think you have clay, but you likely don't. I don't recall any brick factories in your area, so I'm skeptical. After 12 years of moderating three lawn forums, fewer than 10 writers really had clay. Your soil might have clay like properties, but those can be fixed. Even real clay can be fixed, but you have to have a good soil test along with a good reading of the soil test before you can fix it. 9 times out of 10 people who think they have clay have no clay at all but they do have fine silt and a salt imbalance (calcium, sodium, magnesium, and potassium). You can't know what the problem is without the chemistry test. A secondary issue causing hard soil is allowing the soil to dry completely such that the beneficial microbes in the soil are depleted and unhealthy. That can be fixed by spraying the soil with any clear shampoo at a rate of 3 ounces per 1,000 square feet. Follow that with 1/2 to 1 inch of water and let it go for 3 weeks. At the same time feed the soil with an organic fertilizer like alfalfa pellets, corn meal, soybean meal, or even Milorganite. Compost and/or manure won't do the same thing as the fertilizer. The deep moisture creates a perfect environment for the microbes. The organic fertilizer feeds them. Hard soil is easy to fix. The best soil test in the US is from Logan Labs in Ohio. Yes, it's been tested against all the other labs. Get their $25 test and post the results on the Lawn Care forum and you'll get about $250 worth of free advice from people who know specifically what to apply, when, how much, how often, and where to get the stuff. If you want to see some alternate grasses in action, visit Descanso Gardens and the Huntington Library in Pasadena.