I ditto tiller and others. Good advice from all so far. The only thing I would add about chemicals...is that there is one bottle of stuff you really should have, and that is a water treatment for Chlorine and Chlorimines. Chlorine is not that bad if you add less than 10-20% of your total amount at once. The fish can get Gill Burn if they play in the hose spray so put the hose in a area they can't get to. The chlorine will hurt your bacteria colonies in your bio filter but won't wipe em out. After a day or two contact with the air will dissipate the chlorine (it will go faster if you have an airator or waterfall). Chlorimines though are baaaad. They will never leave your pond without being treated with an additive. You can call your water company and see if they use chlorimines. If they do, then you need to get in the habit of using a neutralizer every water change. If they don't then you can get away without, unless you notice your plants being hurt by chlorine when you change the water. "Bad stuff" on the bottom are organic compounds like leaves, fish poop, dead fish etc. As it decomposes it will create a layer of mud called "muck". It's black and smells bad. If your pond ever has a sewer odor that's a sure sign that your muck has run amok and the fish are in danger. When this happens oxygen levels drop and you start getting brown algae and your water will look like rootbeer. Anaerobic bacteria start to go to work in the oxygen free environment. This is a fish death sentence. You should regularly scoop out the majority of the muck leaving as little as possible on the bottom after it settles back down. "Regularly" depends on your pond. More trees, dust, pollen, weaker filter etc mean you need to clean it up more or less than others. There is no rule about how often to clean. To clean out muck, you just need to scoop it out. You can do that by hand, with a bucket or shop vac. One thing I like is this little attachment that goes on the end of a garden hose. The flow of the hose water creates venturi suction that pushes the muck into a little nylon bag. Keep in mind that with any of these options you will stir up the muck and it will take a day or so to see improvement. If you do it regularly, the stirred up muck isn't a problem for the fish. But if you have a deep layer of it you might want to do what destany said above, and move the fish into a container for a bit (filled with pond water!) as all those bad compounds will be spiked during the clean. If your depth is closer to 3 feet I would still think about either getting rid of the goldfish (donate them to a pet store or other ponder) or the koi. With either 3 koi or 11 goldfish you have about the right fishload. But with both, you have about double what you will need in a year or so when they get big. If you are dead set on keeping all of them, you need to plan on losing some to stress or plan on getting a heavy duty biofilter and/or doing regular muck sweeping.

I have had a professional (Belle Mead Painting and Power Washing co.) "soft" power wash our deck every other year. They have an enclosed trailer with multiple 2-300 gallon containers of water and bleach. He has several power buttons on his "power" handle. He gives all a quick water-only spray to begin, then moves to the bleach/water mix (he controls it) and cleans our flooring and the white railings, they look bright white, like new when he is finished. And, fyi, his final rinse is all water again. I have lots of different types of shrubbery around the decking, he has told me again and again, it will not harm. He is right, in the past 6 yrs (just had it done a month ago) the job is very well done, and it has never harmed any of our plantings! Get a pro!

Thanks for the advice so far looking for some more expertise. I was out walking the yard and came across a patch of what appears to be different grass. Two pictures attached. It's a lighter green and is only in two areas close to each other. Any ideas? And second item is the closer I look I see a lot of brown areas sort of under the initial top layer of grass. It's visible in the pictures in the first post I made. Is this grass that is still dormant or some other issue? thanks to all the experts.

Thank you all, @YardVark Thanks again for the drawing that looks very nice. Im sorry, i didn't mean to imply that i was asking for specific plants. I was more asking to understand your vision. To me it looks like the hedge is fighting for attention when you have that sweeping bed go in front of it. Thats the first time if seen that so maybe its just odd to me. (Any other pictures of something like this) This is our hedge but we originally wanted to keep it there to block the neighbors car. Maybee this thing needs to go also. If anyone has a better idea then the hedge to hide the neighbors car incorporated in Yard and DigDugs pictures Im all ears/eyes. @lacyvail: Bay Area San Francisco. Redwoods, maples, these shrubs, etc are like weeds around here. (In a good way) @NhBabs Thanks, we were going to paint small trim etc to lighting it up. Not just the entire place though. However, there has to be something said for the power of perspective. "When two people are the same size, a person wearing a horizontal-striped dress appears to be the thinner of the two. In order for the them to appear to be the same size, the person wearing the horizontal stripes would have to be six percent wider than the person dressed in vertically-striped clothing" Even though we are happy with embracing the cottage feel, the perspective of the tall bush in the front magnifies the shortness in a negative way or maybee just hides to much of the house. I was curious if there is a landscape rule that matches the fashion world. @DigDug Thank you, That is great also. Would you remove the shrubs in the back and on the right side. Like in YardVarks I'm not sure why i have a problem with putting stuff in front of that hedge that separates the two properties. Maybe I need to remove that thing and figure out some other type of privacy barrier. Im very grateful for all input!