I find your question to be interesting. Let's play around with some design thoughts. You do not indicate just how much gardening you wish to do on the site, which would be helpful in planning. Leaving the earth bare around the house, which is low to the ground would lead to mud splashing up on the building and a 'trench' would form eventually from dripping water. Pea gravel is difficult to clear of debris. Larger cobbles make that job a bit easier. There probably will be a snow load dropping which would discourage planting low creepers around the house. If I were doing the design, and you had very deep pockets, random cut bluestone or sandstone (stone color that worked with house color) would be laid from the edge of the house outward, forming an irregular walkway around the house and the stone would be extended into several patio areas where needed. Into this walkway I would incorporate a few groupings of interesting large stone. On the outside of the walk garden areas would be planned that provided interest when viewed, both summer and winter, from the inside. This is an expensive 'fix' but as I studied your pictures my whole plan fell into place. Difficult to write in words. So...back to the real world. Your first step is to study the prevailing wind patterns to understand just how debris is going to pile against the house. If necessary, pound some sticks in the ground with plastic streamers attached and study the wind patterns. Some areas around the house will be very quiet. Others will be hit full force. I would encourage you to use flat, large stone in the latter areas for ease of cleanup. In other more quiet spots use large cobbles. With a bit of thought the two types of stone could be married in interesting patterns. Don't work in straight lines. Curves, please. Hopefully this thumbnail sketch will give you a few ideas.

We have the same drainage system as eimea does - no cracking now in over a year - including over a huge area of backfill (we had a deep end exit ramp that essentially meant our entire back patio area is built over 7-8 feet of fill...we compacted and kept wetting down the area as it filled in, put down a 6-8 inch deep "road base gravel" and then used rebar in the concrete pour - honestly not only do we not have any cracks near the drain - we have none outside of the planned control cuts). Our concrete guy did a good job with slopes - when I look for them I notice that we slope toward the drains but I don't notice it at all walking on it - and we dont' have any areas of pooling. I liked this solution a LOT better than deck-o-drain for our yard/pool. Funny how you wanted concrete and are worried about cracking because of the fill and are looking at pavers - we really wanted pavers - but in my area were getting quotes DOUBLE the cost of stamped colored concrete...we just couldn't pay $20-25+ per square foot! I'd been worried about the concrete over our fill - but the concrete has been in for a week shy of a year now with no problems.

From what I hear maintenance or lack there of is a priority with most homeowners these days. True, composite decks are wood underneath..but that is not what needs re-staining/re-sealing every year or so. To each his own but ROI has nothing to do with our choice to rip off the deck and raise a patio..forget the entire "deck" idea. Usability and lack of maintenance were the only considerations. When we literally only have a few weeks of "patio" weather--I am not going to spend ANY of it on maintenance.

Thanks for the replies. Yep, around here what ain't DG is boulders lying about on the ground. (Aside from these mystery chunks of clay I find - perhaps fill from the developer 30 yrs ago). Some of the hills look like a giant was piling up car sized pebbles. On an earlier 50 ft temporary pathway I just scraped away 2 inches of dirt to make way for the pavers, ran a compactor over the dirt and set the pavers. After five years this "temporary" pathway shows only slight settling (but it does show settling which would be unacceptable in a permanent installation). For this permanent install I wanted to do it by the book. I am pretty confident this existing compressed DG won't move, but I am worried that the compacted aggregate being 4" deep in some spots and only 2" deep in others would give me trouble in the long run.