nicely done. I am not a fan of little white pebbles, it feels artifical to me. But that is personal taste and it seems to work in this situation. Is that a gate at the end?? The design makes you want to follow the path to see what lurks behind the gate. I love mysteries, reminds me of my childhood exploring. Previous posts are concerned about the plants growing to big for the area. Not a problem, if you are like me, you'll want to move things around and/or plant something that catches you eye at the local nursery. Herbaceous material is so much fun. It is so easy to transplant, divide etc. HAVE FUN. Maybe a trellis with an annual vine on the blank wall. Or Clematis (sun) shade roots. Or a water feature one that hangs on wall etc. I wish there was some other material to edge the path. Keep up your creative gardening. ALLY

My inclination would be to define the property edge with a row, or double row of street trees. There is nothing that qualifies as an eyesore needing screening and no projected use of the side yard requires privacy. So why hide a nice view? I'd invite people passing by to look into and admire your yard. Street trees (limbed up so that the view is maintained, of course!) add order and stateliness, mark the property limits, generally dress it up and display your affection for it. How you handled the ground space below the trees would depend on their spacing and shade pattern. It could be grass, groundcover (something easy) or mulch. Because the location is some distance from the house and because you have time, if you wanted, you could use trees that are more unusual, Maclura pomifera for instance. They should look nice, but don't need to reek of high formality unless that's what you want. Where you need privacy for the back yard you could use sizable shrubs placed somewhere near the fence as a hedge or in carefully placed groupings. The end of the house needs a couple of trees to shield some of the blank wall space. They could be shade or flowering trees. They don't need to be jammed up on the house but could be spaced a distance away proportionate to their ultimate size. A few shrubs to fit with the lower level blank space could be worked into the scheme.

Your beds are so nice and cool looking, perfect for a hot summer day! That arch is wonderful, too. What do you have growing up the sides?

My 81yo mom still lives in a big old house that we kids grew up in and had my Dad's office in the front. I wish that she would move to a smaller all on one floor place with less out door care, but she doesn't want to and its not my decision. The old pool is just a hole the ground with no water in it since the lining degraded, and since it has a sand bottom there's actually plants growing in it. She also had a pile of junk near it by the fence. A few years ago the neighbors complained to the town about the junk and the safety of the pool. So my brother arranged to take the pile of junk away (it really wasn't anything she would use) and she arranged to have an additonal 4 foot welded vinyl wire fence put around the pool including inside the taller wood fence that blocked the neighbors view of the pool because that was also getting old. BTW it would be very difficult for a toddler to get into her yard from the complaining neighbors house because there is also a fence along the property line. She didn't bother to have the gate put back in around the pool. I stupidly didnt' remove the tires that used to hold the cover down until the new fence went up but I'm sure it was good for me to fling ice and water filled tires over the fence which I then took to the dump. The rules had changed since the pool was put in decades ago and part of her fence had been only 3 ft, so now it was 4 feet per the code and the pile of old metal garbage gone. Well that wasn't enough for the official in her town. He said she had to fill the pool in. She looked into it, and talk about a lot of money! I went with her to meet with him, with the code in hand and he insisted that if she kept the pool she had to meet the standard in fencing for railings on open stairways! (A pool fence is supposed to keep out LITTLE children, a big kid or adult could just use the gate that most pools have.) Her fence, which was double in most places, the 3 ft and 4 ft together clearly met the standard. But he kept referring to it as "chicken wire" even though I corrected him several times. Every time he said it he would smile smugly. He also proudly informed us that he'd made a half dozen people fill in their old pools. Meanwhile out in back of the building where these offices were there was an old cellar hole full of water with a few sticks and some caution tape around it! I took a picture of that as well as the toy filled yard across the street. Well luckily my husband is the type who reads irs bulletins for fun, and he is very familiar with building codes, and he's a force to be reckoned with. He wrote a four page letter to the official and cc'd it to the city manager and the city attorney both of whom he knew a little bit, and he tore apart the arguements of the official referring to the code by number and paragraph. We haven't heard anything since, and I've got my fingers crossed. It still make me mad when ever I see fencing that my home town hired someone to enforce codes who doesn't even know what chickenwire is. I'd like to make some trouble, but I'm worried it would come back on my mom. Live Free or Die! as we say in NH. Strawberrygoat, I hope you find some allies. I think that is what you need. Kathy