I like where you are headed with this. At first glance, my thought was a formal style since the area is very symmetrical. I love formal landscaping and all your inspiration pics, hedges, boxwoods and evergreens. I would start with a three tier-fountain dead center in the courtyard, as that will also be your view from the pool AND the focal point from the interior of your home as well. Start there, design around that. Put it on paper, taking into consideration the heights of plants, the views from various angles and whether it will hide or accentuate views from a seating area, inside your home, etc. I'd plant some tall arborvitae on the far side of the pool for an evergreen backdrop. Where the pool stairs come up to the courtyard, I'd plant a row or hedge of boxwood along this concrete platform with a minimum 36" entryway dead center, but no smaller than the width of those stairs in the pool. Lay a path of lannon fieldstone that goes up to and around the fountain, similar to your first inspiration pic. Or you could go with stone more formal than that, maybe a slate that coordinates with the grey color in the tile in your pool. Similar to your last inspiration pic. For main walkways, never go smaller than 36" for the width. A pergola at the back of the house would be stunning. Adorable house, and so much potential!

I think this is the plan to which you are referring? I can't read dimensions due to the small graphic and it doesn't show elements like a kitchen or bathrooms (or closets), so I'm not sure where those are intended to be. If the room to the right of the study and the one above the master are both bedrooms, then you'd have to walk outside from either one to get to any other room, like the kitchen or a bathroom. I've stayed in vacation homes like that in the tropics, but I don't think you'd want that in year round in VA. If you have young kids, you'd have to walk outside to get to their rooms if they needed you in the middle of the night. I'm not sure where the garage is meant to be, but it looks like getting into the house (e.g. with bags of groceries) is all through the front and then walking through the open living or the courtyard to get to wherever the kitchen is. I think a challenge with courtyard plans is that they either have a lot of space devoted to interior hallways or most of the rooms are only connected through outdoor access, which I don't think you'd want on a chilly, rainy day. There might be a perfect courtyard plan out there for you, but I'm not sure this is it.

smartdesigner- I generally have a negative reaction when people want to classify bamboo as a nuisance based on their fear it will get out of control and devour the neighborhood. However, your situation is exceptional. If you are not allowed to use the normal, effective bamboo controls, then I think that approaching the city with the position that this could become a nuisance situation is a good strategy and kind of puts the ball in their court. They would have to either say that you aren't allowed to control it and worry about the consequences if it moves out and compromises the area, or they can decide that a modest barrier is going to do more good than harm. Or they could decide to get your neighbor to remove it. He might still get annoyed, but you wouldn't be the sole target. Installing barrier means trenching down maybe 24 inches, which means groundwater would still be able to move, and if the barrier was kept an inch or two above ground level, surface water could move over it when the area gets a lot of water. I understand that they don't want to have people building diversionary dams, but I would argue to them that bamboo barrier doesn't constitute that level of habitat alteration. (Between you and me -- and something you don't need to share with the city -- is that, although bamboo do like water, they do not like too much water. Bamboo will typically not move through a stream bed, and they begin to suffer and die when their root systems are continuously subject to standing water for several weeks. So it's hard to know in your situation what bamboo will do in this environment.) However, approaching the city with your concerns is wise as this shouldn't have to fall all on you. Good luck and post back when you have more to share.

Are you familiar with bamboo at all? Most species of bamboo flower and set seeds very rarely.........it may be 20, 30, even 100 years before a particular species of bamboo flowers and sets seeds. Therefore, seeds are rare to come by, typically rather expensive and often do not remain viable for very long. It is far easier to obtain started plants or culm divisions from established clumps. Do you know what kind of bamboo you want? A clumping form or a running form? If a running type, are you willing to devote the effort into a containment system and the ongoing maintenance that requires? Bamboo is not a plant selection that should be undertaken without a good understanding of what's involved in its care and siting. Many (most) types are extremely aggressive growers, spread rampantly and are over the top difficult to remove if they grow where not wanted or intended. I'd suggest you take this request - with a lot more details on exactly what you are looking for and for what particular situation - to the Bamboo forum for some very specialized input.