I crudely modified a landscape plan that I found on Pinterest to kind of show what I was thinking of for our yard. Our deck is not quite as large as the one shown in the plan. The shed could be moved anywhere in the plan except in the grass swale area. I find that my proposed plan puts everything clumped together and it looks strange to me having nothing in the swale section beside the fence. I am frustrated that I can't landscape that section of my yard but what can I do? Do you have any suggestions or comments? Thank you!

In the picture, are we looking at your house, or the back yard neighbor's house? I think you need to forget about pasting a ready-made plan onto your yard and analyze and rectify what you have. Surely, you want to screen the opposing houses to some degree? Also, forget about the last 7 feet and work on what's in front of it. Where does the back fence go relative to the swale?

Can you plant your trees on "this" side of the swale? There'd be a gap between the trees and fence, but so what.

Violetwest, I can plant trees in front of the swale so 8-9 feet from the back fence but I can't plant any trees/shrubs etc in that darn grass swale. It has to remain obstruction free. Nor can I put rock mulch or bark mulch in the area instead of the grass.

My main dilemma is how to curve my flower beds to incorporate the grass section at the back of the property and make it look like it was meant to be that way and not look like I just forgot to plant anything at the back of our yard.

What I'm submitting here is not a prescription but a possible scheme or collection of ideas that you might mold into something that's actually workable. I see the need for screening, especially at the back, which is what the adapted Pinterest plan seems so ignore. A reasonable solution would be planting around the perimeter of the back yard while keeping the central portion of it clear. Other than suggesting a division between trees vs. lower shrubs, annuals and perennials, I'm not suggesting what any of the plants are specifically. It would be something to determine as the plan is worked out in detail and to scale. Note that adaptations would be made over time, as plants grow and things change.

Given the small size of the yard, the storage shed presents problems, maybe more so after you find out what's actually allowed. Would be nice to keep it as small as possible. There is one relatively blank place at the back of the house. Maybe it could go in front of that or be added onto the house like an exterior closet.

Thank you Yardvaark! You are amazing! I have been told just today that I can remove the grass in the swale area and put washed rock instead if I like. I can't plant anything in the swale area though that is 7 feet wide X 40 feet long. The grass has been put there to keep erosion from happening and it is owned by the city so I can't plant anything in it. :(

The shed size I was planning to go with is 8'X10' and regulations say it must be 3' from the side fence and at least 3' from the house.

You can't take this comment at the "last word" on the subject, but ... I understand why the grass is there. The people who make the rules probably have never even heard of the term "low groundcover" when they wrote the rules. I could almost stake a year's salary that -- after some time passes -- if there was low groundcover instead of grass, that no one would bat an eye, say a thing, or ask you to change it back to grass. Why, because materially, it serves the exact same function in the exact same way and no one cares other than that. Of course, I would not do it while the city boys are around snooping the neighborhood because, for sure, there will be a greenhorn or Nazi among them and they WILL ONLY UNDERSTAND GRASS. In the future, much of this grass will die due to shade from trees. Then there will be bare dirt, trash, weeds, groundcover and all sorts of odds & ends growing in this swale. Look at any swale like it in an older neighborhood.

Then those are the rules you would follow in placing the shed. If this was my place, I would go out of my way to make it cute so I could stand looking at it.