front yard

side yard

It's best to limit the thread to one major section of the yard at a time, or the conversation can become confusing. (Everyone must be careful to state what part of they yard they talking about.)

For front yard your starting photo is fine for showing the overall, but it lacks in detail. Move up to the city sidewalk and take a series of slightly overlapping photos that pan the whole scene from far left to far right. The camera should be centered in the scene and stay in the exact same spot for all photos.

House faces which direction? The children need a play area? What is the distance to the coast?

There are many helpful websites that have been developed recently to help CA gardeners convert thirsty, water-consuming gardens into still very attractive but more xeric, drought tolerant landscapes. In addition to touring the neighborhood and seeing if there are are similar type properties you admire, I'd start there. Search under California Friendly Garden Guide, Bewaterwise.com or waterwise gardening.

Rogers Gardens (mentioned above) is a wonderful nursery that also provides landscape consultations and design services. I have no idea of their price structure (likely on the higher end) but it might be worth investigating. They also sponsor an annual California Friendly Gardens contest and this is definitely worth researching as the photo galleries of the previous winners can provide a wealth of inspirational ideas and suggestions. California Friendly Garden contest.

My sister used to live in Dana Point and I would visit her often and somehow frequently got roped into redesigning friends' and neighbors' gardens there and in Laguna Beach and San Clemente to be more drought tolerant :-) She has since moved up north here to the PNW, so I have not recently done any work in SoCal but the above are excellent resources for the DIY'er and a good place to at least start formulating what you want.

Thank you yaardvark. i just uploaded some pics as you suggested for the front yard. new user so bear with me - for some reason houzz wouldn't let me upload more than two. i will try and edit/add more through comments.

hooveb - that's exactly right. Several contractors would not even come out to give a quote unless the project was a minimum $50k. Your drip irrigation story sounds awesome. I think we know what we want but the lowest possible option still comes out to about $45k. I am drawing a blank as to what we need to outsource to the contractor and what part we can do ourselves. We have been mulling over this project for over a year now. Spoken with 3 or 4 contractors, looked at lots of houses and millions of pictures. Information overload perhaps because i still can't seem to make it work.

As I said, we know what we want. we want to extend the patio area (concrete/pavers) to twice the existing size to provide entertaining/play space. Cost of that is $10k minimum, possibly more. The other half of the backyard would have remained lawn/turf but with better irrigation since artificial turf would be even more expensive and we don't like it much. Some sort of focal point in the backyard would be nice but an appropriately sized water fountain would add another $5-$8k so nixed that.

We were considering adding a retaining wall on the back end of the backyard and on the right side and extend the sidewalk but that's another $10k so nixed most of it.

We want to add a fire pit and some seating. We want to extend the concrete sidewalk (sideyard), build steps going up to the front of the house, add some trees that will eventually provide shade. Veggie garden on the other side of the side yard.

We ruled out bbq/island etc. We had also ruled out gravel/decomposed granite (except in the veggie garden area) as being hard on the feet and tough to maintain but I am wondering if we can work that into the design somehow to keep costs down.

kiminipl - house faces North east. Backyard faces southwest and as I said, we get relentless sun. There were three ficus trees in the corners of the backyard that we had to take down because the roots were terribly invasive but it made things worse from a shade perspective.

garden gal - thank you for your perspective. I will check out the link. I have scoured pics on bewaterwise.com, houzz for drought tolerant plants etc... just can't seem to figure out the right plan for us with the budget we have in mind.

As I said.. help/ideas/perspective on actual situation (looking at the pics) would be much appreciated. thank you all so much!

For me, there would definitely be a front-walk-widening program in the budget.

Don't know what plants would work for you, but I would do a simple scheme with low groundcover filling in left of entrance.

Thanks yaardvark. What is the brown area - what would you recommend there?

If you lived where lawn was not a problem, it would be lawn. I don't know what to recommend there for you. Therefore, the drawing has finely crushed stone material. Is there anything there that grows really low and holds up to dry conditions?

I used to live and work there and unfortunately everyone is into the "lushy gushy" plantings, but now with the water restrictions, people are more open to considering Xeriscape style gardens which use gravel instead of grass or groundcover and everything is drip irrigation. Search for some desert southwest style garden pictures to see if you can find them appealing. Keep your hardscape to absolute minimum like using pavers for the patio and a portable type fire pit (not a built in with gas). You've got to let some things go in order to afford everything. Focus on the softscape as it does not cost as much as hardscape.

I remember once driving by a house in Newport Beach and they had a Saquaro cactus and some Agaves. I did a double take since it looked so foreign. They must have moved from Phoenix, AZ - point is, it looked sophisticated and certainly drought resistant.

Use a small gravel for ground cover that is compactable

Plants in the pic:

Yucca alifolia
Agave parryi
Damianita
Autumn Sage
Spanish lavender