So far, the pictures are good for explaining the house setting, and even though they're a little distant, they're not too bad for explaining the foundation planting area either.

Here are some general idea suggestions. They are not suggestions for color as that is used merely to help differentiate one object from the next:

1. widen the sidewalk. An easy way that adds interest is to widen it by adding a row or two (depending how much additional width you want -- 16" or 32") of sailor course brick flush along the walk edge. Move the mailbox out of the way. I am against your idea of lining the walk with flowers. While in and of themselves they are pretty, they work against the idea of making the entrance and approach to it more inviting. They make the walk seem even narrower and obstruct too much view of approach to entrance, and for too long.
2. Remove lower limbs from the existing trees. (These add a scruffy look to the overall picture.) While it seems removing the leftward limb from the right tree will create too much "vacancy", the limbs above (green arrow) will develop to take its place in a better position.
3. Create circular beds below the existing trees. (It will be semi-circular where it meets drive.) Imagine they are in a giant sunken pot capable of supporting their life. The beds need to be that large. plant solid with groundcover. Can be as high as 3'
4. Create a quarter circle bed, outside of the walks, for a small tree off the front, right corner of the porch. It would be made of a large shrub.
5. The foundation front planting would be a combination of shrubs/perennials/annuals, each in their own section. In front of the porch, I wouldn't put anything that exceeds the height of the porch, unless above that line it is only wispy blooms. Shrubs will probably be along side the house and show from the front. (We can't see the sides so can't yet say what and where.)
6. Screening for the wood piles would be part of a side yard planting scheme based on pictures of that side of house (taken face-on and show from 9 to 3 o'clock overlapping scenery.)

Yardvaark, very nice.

I'm thinking we need zones: eating, playing, walking, wood storage, etc.

Definitely ... make a sketch of the house, or enlarge something from Google Maps overhead view and draw on it. Here's one I did ... it's enough for coarse planning.

Wood storage ... you need a long term sheltered seasoning area (buying green wood is cheaper, and if you cut your own, it's green) and some closer to the house storage for the next week or two worth of heating wood.

Check Pinterest for "wood storage" and "firewood storage". they have many easy ways to do it.

A good rule for firewood is to cut it and stack it as soon as you get it (my dad thought that kids made great stackers), or even cut it to fire length in the woods before it hits your truck. That log pile, unless you are planning a bonfire in that spot, is useless as firewood because you can't walk out and grab a piece of the right length.

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Are you planning a produce garden? If so, make sure it's within reach of water.

I figure the walk from house to drive is more used & important than walk to street. I would upgrade it.

I would hide bottom of bay window by surrounding in 3' - 4' ht. shrubs. Either bump the bed out a little more in order to accommodate them, or add depth to bed along entire side of house.

All of these are great ideas so far, thank you. The drawings and explanations are extremely helpful, Yardvaark. We definitely want to widen the walk from the house to the driveway this summer. That's what the stacks of stone by the porch are for, as well as the tarped mound of sand at the back of the pad. We also want to make a walking path from the steps to a garden area on the south since we've killed the grass walking through there to the garden and taking the dogs to their bathroom spot.

Doing ground cover under the trees is intriguing. I'll have more questions about how to handle that down the road since we've never done anything like that at any of our homes in the past.

DH has plans to build another wood storage unit or two. Every few weeks he fills wheelbarrow loads with wood and dumps them directly into a wood storage bin that's under the basement landing (the landing is a lift up hatch.) Those branches on the pad are from downed trees this winter and will be cut and stacked asap. Yes, our kids help stack wood, too. : )

Here is a sketch of the yard (I was unable to get google maps to give me an image that I could save and open in paint.)

I'll upload more pictures of the side yard soon. (So embarrassing that it's like this right now, but I want it to get better badly enough that I'm asking for help!)

For google maps, you can take a screen shot and open that up in paint. (Then crop anything embarrassing.)

This will be a fun project (to watch someone else do)!

Thanks Fori. We might be quite elderly before we get it all done. ; )

For the side yard I would position camera as in diagram. (I've turned your plan so the front of house is facing sheet bottom.) If possible, it would be good if you could bump your picture size up to one setting larger.

Diagram? Is there an attachment missing?

OOps ... Uuh yeah ...

Thank you, now I understand what you meant.

It's so easy to forget to attach everything.

MS Paint (with a stylus and touchscreen) makes it easy to sketch ideas & thoughts.

Deep breath. I'd like to take MS Paint and obliterate all this yard clutter. (I know it's going, must be patient.) Here goes...

What is basement door used for and how much. Does one who is going to work in the "yard" use the front door or basement door? It looks like there's a lot of work that happens in this yard.

The basement door gets used multiple times daily. We go in and out the front door to work in the yard. Currently, this basement door is the only way in and out of the basement. We have plans for finishing the area under our living room at the back of our home, and then we would build interior steps and put in a walkout to the back yard at that point.

Yes, there is a lot of work that happens in this yard, and that was a nice way to put it. :-) The construction materials and general debris will be going away. We've been renovating this house for the last several years, and our focus has primarily been on the interior during that time. The inside is looking great, meanwhile the outside suffers with what you see here.

In the end we will still need a spot near the wood bins for processing wood, but I'd love to shield it somehow. Thank you for your help!

Good words kitasei, thank you. Do you have pictures of the wood storage situation at your house? I'd love some inspiration. The spot where we have the wood bin has incredible ventilation and lots of sunshine, and is on one of the only flat areas near the house for easy transport to the basement.

We have a large bin in the basement that holds several weeks' worth of wood for our wood furnace which also lives down there. The basement landing, just as you step in the side door, is a dual purpose step/lift up hatch that DH built. It lifts up so that he can dump wheelbarrow loads of wood directly into the wood storage bin below. It works quite well. (The only downside is that it makes my heart leap in my chest each time he starts to dump the wood. It sounds just like someone taking a terrible tumble down the stairs when the wood drops down into the bin. Hopefully it'll help keep my heart young, lol.)

Well, your work is very impressive and i really like it. Have you done any woodwork there if yes then i desperately wants to see this.

Thank you, Hannah. DH installed the arched window at the top of the bay, the oval window, the front porch, and the roof over the basement door. When we bought the house, it looked like this. He loves woodworking, but this project has kept him quite busy for several years now. (Tree on right was removed. Much of the branches on the left that were close to the electric lines have been cut way back by the electric company, too.)

Well, the house is a whole lot better looking now. The roof over the basement door adds a lot of charm.

The plan you've posted above is fine for working out some schematics about where things will go very generally. But now that you're transitioning to specifics, you're going to need a plan that's to a measured scale. (Again, I would orient it so that the road is at the bottom of the sheet.) Since the property is a good bit larger than an average yard, you'll need to draw it on paper larger than 8 1/2 x 11. You can fit 140 real life feet x 190' on an 18" x 24" sheet if drawing at 1/8" = 1' scale, if that's large enough. If you draw at 1/10" = 1' you can fit 180' x 240' on the same paper. If needed, you can always draw sections of the yard on separate sheets. Once you determine what scale you're going to use, I'd go ahead and purchase an architect's or engineer's scale and a T-square so drawing will be easy and you'll end up with an accurate end product. You'll also need a plastic triangle, medium size. Work in pencil.

If you haven't done such a drawing before, first draw a base plan. It will have only the existing property features which will remain permanently: house footprint, walks, drive, outbuildings, tree trunks, fences, power poles, etc. If anything will be moved or gotten rid of, don't include it. Don't draw anything on it that is speculation about the future. If you work out ideas and fantasies on the base plan and later decide you want to take something in a different direction, then you have to draw another base plan without the "mistake." It's better to make copies of the base plan and work your ideas out on a copy. The old school way of working out the ideas is to draw them on tracing paper that is masking-taped onto the base plan. Once you decide that something is how you want it, then transfer it, perfecting it, to the working copy of the base plan. If you skip drawing a base plan and try to work things out on the current sketch plan, you'll discover later that something you thought worked perfectly, doesn't work, or barely works at all.

Looking at the issue of hiding the wood and utility area, I think you might consider placing the screen along a line that intersects with the house somewhere between the kitchen window and basement entry. How it interfaces with the house depends on other things that we don't know about right now ... expansion of the deck, for example. If there is going to be an outdoor area for lounging or relaxing, you're not going to want to look at the wood pile or utility area from there either. So I think the screen would likely turn the corner and run parallel to the house. You'll need to consider what views you wish to preserve. It might mean that the screen has its corners cut at a diagonal or something along those lines, in order to widen the view from the house area.

The screen could have access at any place you determine is useful. At this point we wouldn't know what the screen is made of. Whether it's a fence, trimmed hedge, or extended trellis (a fence-like structure where vines create the screening,) it can have gates wherever you wish them to be. Consider how you'll be bringing wood into the house. If it's through a door on the first floor, you may wish to have a rack raised to floor level which is convenient to the door (say by walking across the deck, for example.) It could be contained within the utility area but easily accessible via a gate or opening. This is a schematic example ...

Thank you, yardvaark. To clarify, we do not need a wood rack. Our wood furnace is in the basement, and that is where the wood that's in use is stored. You can read an explanation in my previous post about how the storage system works.

I'd like the screen to go closer to the wood units, if it all possible.

I had the drawing tools you describe years ago, but I think they went by the wayside in one of our moves. I was in the last graphic design class at college that taught us to draw without computer assistance, so I guess you could say I'm one of the dinosaurs. : ) I'll look into acquiring them again.

'I'd like the screen to go closer to the wood units, if it all possible."

What are the "wood units"? The screen is going to go where you put it, but that's why it needs to be determined during the planning stage, and why you'll need an accurate drawing.

Wood unit 1, as seen from kitchen window:

You need a tall screen then. If a screen was a fence, it might seem fortress-like. A trimmed hedge would look great but would be a pain to trim. There is always the row of columnar shrubs as another possibility. It would also look great but take a fair number of them to pull it off and be a wait for it to come together. Another possibility is to screen with vines if you give them something to grow on. It is the fastest and cheapest solution and you have to use the right vine (something that drapes.) Here's an example of vines that I used. These grow on a chain that is suspended between the top of each post. Twine was run from chain to stakes pounded in the ground in order to give the vines something to climb on initially. Can be any height dependent on appropriately sized posts.

Hy Laughablemoments!
Thanks you gave me positive feedback and the work you have sent is really impressive. But can you show me your woodwork like on furniture or in kitchen.

That's a really neat idea to run vines like that, Yardvaark. Thank you. Are there vines that stay nice through the winter season?

Hannah, I'm sure you can find more woodworking ideas through a google image search than you could shake a stick at. Let's keep this thread on topic. Thanks.

I consider even deciduous vines to be "nice" ... even though their screening would diminish in areas with freezes. Still, they would offer filtered screening.

You know, there is some style and taste things to consider. You live out in the country, you have a sprawling yard. You don't need to have landscaping that is necessarily neat and trimmed up and structural like an urban yard might have. For example, what's to say you can't have a row of dwarf, low growing flowering trees screening out most of your wood storage area. I have a row of flowering trees screening my house from the road and it is a joy in the spring. We planted one tree a year for a couple of years, I have magnolia, crabapple and dogwood. I'm not saying you should do this, I'm just saying that there are a lot of options with all the space you have. And limbed-up trees is one look, but to me when it is used in every situation regardless of style or scale, it says "contrived" and is not necessary. YMMV.

@I pinkmountain ... I don't thing "limbed up tree" is style dependent. It's simply a device that provides shade, upper level screening, framing of the lower level, and character. It goes with any style that needs any of those things without blocking view of house. Therefore, it's almost universal in any situation where one wishes to promote a view of the house from the street or front yard. There's nothing wrong with blocking a view with a row of trees in the shrub form (not limbed up) if one has the room. But it would take considerably space in order to pull that off, as opposed to a trimmed hedge or extended trellis.

I prefaced it by saying she has the room. And to my way of thinking, if you have the room, why not take advantage of it. If I had a country home like Laughablemoments, I'd plant apple, cherry and plum for my preserves. But that's just me and my taste, which is why I recommend first thinking about all the ways you want to use your yard and what views you most often see and what you want to see, and what level of maintenance you want. To some, my choice of low growing fruit trees would be messy as all get out and they might not want all the bees. Knowing what use and level of maintenance you want helps you select the right plant for the job.

Interesting discourse on suburban vs. country landscaping. I'm not opposed to trimming the lower limbs of the maples, except for the limb that our swing is hanging from. I've felt for a long time that it would be easier to landscape a postage stamp sized yard, but I've never had less than 3/4 of an acre, so I can't be sure. We're the only gardeners, so the property needs to be easy to maintain. I've been ogling yards around here since posting, and few in this area have extensive landscaping. (It might be easier if they did, then I could copy some ideas!)

We're not itching to grow fruit trees necessarily, but we would love to grow raspberries. Fruit farms abound here, so getting apples and such is not difficult. (At least it's easy to find non organic ones.) Hmmmm...my kids would love for us to grow peaches, too.

As an update, DH built the rest of the wood shed, we got the rest of the wood cut, split, and stacked, and finally went to the scrap yard. Then we brought home another downed tree as a curtesy to a relative, so we have a little more splitting to do again.

I ordered a roll of drawing vellum and a T square (own the triangles) and am waiting for some books on potager gardening to arrive. This is what we see from our kitchen window, so it would be easy to keep an eye on a small garden here, and it's a very sunny spot.

Beautiful! It looks like you have a place for anything you want to do.

Yes, the hard part is deciding what to do with all this space. I'm glad my son enjoys mowing in the mean time.

Sometimes it's easier to start with little vignettes, little areas that have a specific function for you. And to prioritize what your biggest pet peeves are. Also, with a big yard, you don't need stuff way up close to either provide or block views, you get different perspectives from a short view to a long view.

I am dealing with something similar in my large suburban yard right now. It's on a river, and it's nice to watch the river flow from the house. But it is also on the corner of a busy road. So to provide privacy and block the view of the deck from the road, the previous owners planted sand cherry shrubs. Two problems with that . . . they are planted way too close to the deck so all they do is hold moisture against the wood deck and block one's view of the river while out on the deck. Also are too big for the space so need constant pruning to keep in line. Also have been improperly pruned so all the growth is at the top, (where the view is, btw). Many perspectives to think about in the planning process.

One thing I do is notice common solutions to common problems as I drive around my rural area. Your one situation (hiding the woodshed and woodpile) is fairly common, most large properties around here have some kind of functional outbuilding, and making it not an eyesore is a common problem. There are structural things you can do to the shed to make it look as nice and neat and pretty as possible. You could probably google "nice looking small barns" and find lots of inspirations too. I have a toolshed that I am currently working on "de-eyesoring" and used that technique. A couple of common solutions to eyesores around me are: a row of trees, sometimes evergreen, sometimes flowering. In your case, that might be a case of too large and imposing too close to the house. These rows of trees usually screen one property from another or the house and driveway from the barn. Another solution that I just love, is the row of big old lilac shrubs. A very common thing that screens homes from driveways and backyard from barnyard. There are other flowering shrubs that make nice hedges too. I have a spirea one where I work, and I once lived in a house with a mock orange hedge between the street and backyard. And lastly, big fences! Lots of times out in the country you end up living next to someone who decides to get a big dog and pen it up right next to your yard, or creates a junk pile, or decides to collect old cars . . . I see lots of creative ways to make big fences look attractive!

If you like raspberries, I used them for a screen back at my old tiny urban house. I trained them up trellises. I plan on putting them against my neighbors fence where I live now, as a screen and also due to their beauty and yumminess. He and I already talked about it and they were all gung-ho if they get some of the berries. In your case, you might consider putting a split rail fence around the woodpile/shed and training berry bushes against it. Here's a photo of my bushes. They are kind of a pain to train and prune, (although there are thornless varieties) but every year I would swear I was tearing them out, then I'd get busy, forget to do that and they would bloom and set fruit and I'd be all in love again.

Thank you for all of the ideas, ipinkmountain. It sounds like you are familiar with the challenges of rural living and landscaping. Yes to this: with a big yard, you don't need stuff way up close to either provide or block views, you get different perspectives from a short view to a long view. That sums up part of the challenge. We love our long views and don't want to block them! Any screening that we do needs to stay just tall enough to block/blend our own things, but short enough to maintain the long views. So yes, vines, shrubs, and bushes make a lot of sense. I'd love more lilacs, some magnolias, piles of peonies, maybe some Rose of Sharon... Since yardvaark's suggestion of using vines, I've thought of training some Morning Glories and Clematis to grow along the ends of the wood shed. Now that the wood is stacked in there more neatly, the view of it is bothering me less than it was.

The area I'm still stumped on is the spot directly in front of the wood pile, right behind the driveway. In the latest picture, there was a pile of wood to be split on that spot (that got done yesterday, yay!) Like someone mentioned upthread, this is a good spot for the wood dumping and splitting task, yet it's unsightly.

DH said he's fine with moving the stones off this spot, since we will never put a shed here like the former owner did. (The PO had a shed here that he sold before listing the house.) If we move the stones away, what do we do with the area that's left? Just plant it to grass, put a potager (autocorrect doesn't know that word, and wants to change it to postage!) garden there, or some other solution that remains to be discovered? We've been hard on the grass by the house, wearing muddy paths on the most used areas, so this might not be the best solution. Hardscaping looks $$.

Long range (the 5 year+ plan), it makes sense to move the vegetable gardens out back, behind the house, at the bottom of the hill. I won't do this until we have a walk out from the basement back there though, and easy water access. Our best tended gardens are up where we see them and can access them easily, I've learned. Right now it's difficult to see the bottom of the hill easily, and even more difficult to get to it.

There are basically two methods of making something look better: covering it with a housing; or "chroming" it (for lack of knowing someone else's better term). An example of the former are car bodies and almost any kitchen appliance. We don't see the guts of a toaster because they are covered with a concealing housing. Some ugly things on the other hand, because they are either difficult to conceal or the designer wants different, are left to be exposed but their surface is treated to make it jewel-like or somehow otherwise pretty, and the quintessential example of this is the Harley-Davidson motorcycle, which is why I call it "chroming." Every part of the ugly engine is covered in chrome so that, collectively, the engine looks like a big, shiny piece of vibrating jewelry. It seems that both these techniques will be useful in tidying up the yard space.

One pitfall of concealing by using the housing method, is that whatever is being concealed becomes larger. Since shrubs and vines are the common material of which to make landscape "housing," they are bulky and can consume enormous amounts of space, depending on how they are maintained. In addition, if the materials won't do their job naturally once arranged in the proper spot, maintaining them can require a LOT of trimming maintenance. It helps to have a big yard in order to use these things this way. My own back yard is small but there happens to be a more or less massive heat pump at the back, center of the house. When I was initially planning the back yard I figured I'd do what everyone does and conceal it. But I'm a believer in testing ideas (to the extent one can) prior to implementing them. I used tall stakes and flagging tape to simulate the limits of a concealing vine on a trellis (it being less than the size shrubs would need to consume.) The concealing planting had to be larger enough than the AC unit in order to conceal it so seemed, with its housing, as if something the size of half a locomotive was parked at the back of the house! I knew immediately I wasn't going to be happy with it. My next solution was a combination of "housing" and "chroming." The chroming part was that the AC unit was given a two-tone paint job with gloss oil base paint. The housing part was a trellis surround that was very low and allowed the AC to be seen except for at the very bottom. The front posts were very short The trellis was my standard posts connected by swag chains that are hung on hooks, which allows me to remove the vine (by unhooking and laying down flat) whenever the front panel on the AC unit needs to be accessed for servicing. I'm happy with the compromise solution as what part of the AC unit shows, does not look offensive.

Another thing that helps to conceal, though it is not concealment itself is placing something in shade. Many things can be obvious in sun, but nearly hidden in shade. Another things that sometimes help conceal is distraction, by having something more important upstaging the offending object. Another is "filtering". Even if a screen can be seen through partially -- as a gauzy haze -- it many times can be enough to remove offensiveness.

So there are lots of tools to work with. But don't think about it too much at this stage. The first thing to plan for is where the various functions of the yard will occur, and arranging them for harmonious interaction.