Ink, I don't think this garden has more Wow than a good japanese garden necessarilly. I think it is much bolder in its delivery of some of the same goods. Those goods are what I view to be the wow in a japanese garden (in a much less subtle way). That is the fight between unity and divergence until a balance is built that makes it calm. If you think about it, calm or peace is more noticable when viewing things that we expect to be the opposite. Usually, we describe someone as calm when they are in situations where we expect them not to be. You don't look at someone in a coma and say "Jim sure is calm today". But you might say Jim sure is calm when some punk runs a stop sign, smashes into his car, flips him the bid, and takes off while Jim calls 911 and explains the situation to the police in a matter of fact way. That is what I think is the great mystery in japanese gardens that is overlooked. They give off such a powerful sense of peace because they are calm in the heat of battle. Calm without that battle is not powerful if you think about it. A lawn should be more peaceful than a japanese garden, but it lacks the battle and so becomes less impressive. Many of us look at the planting above and think it has to be chaos and it has to be too busy because you just can't mix that much stuff. Look at Alan Bloom's gardens with heath, heather, and dwarf conifers. It is the same battle between unity and divergence that puts the funk into that. Don't underestimate the importance of the lawn and the heather that freezes chaos into calmness in his work. That is a wow and a half. It is the same set principles - contrast, hidden balance, lack of a supreme focal point, and strong unity from unexpected sources that tend to go unnoticed.

Actually, I would say that most humans try to do whatever they think is best for themselves and immediate family, without seeming to impinge too outrageously upon others. Just short of official censure, IOW. Obviously a significant minority are utterly selfish and do not stop even at directly harming others and/or their prospects. I agree that every bit of extractable fossil fuel will be extracted and used, presuming our capacity to do so persists long enough. I don't think it will, for a large number of factors: climate change, environmental degradation, costly conflicts over land and resources to name a few. These will likely reduce human civilizations to subsisting on annual sun-fall before we get to all coal and shale deposits. The richest societies will likely manage a partial shift to renewables via best technology but that savings will be engulfed and then some by the ravening horde. It's gonna be a wild ride.

I've been reading The Gulag Archipelago and have managed to get through Volumes I & II. However, before I tackle Volume III, I decided to take a break to read a couple of "Golden Age Mysteries." Ha! The book I chose first was written by an obscure-to-me author, Annie Haynes, and was first published in 1924. The Secret of Greylands thoroughly confused me! I thought I was reading a Victorian sensation novel along the lines of Wilkie Collins or Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret, maybe even Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Everyone was either walking or being transported around the north-country (Northumberland?) in farm wagons, dog carts, or carriages. Then out of the blue a 'motor' (motor car) appeared on a road. The King was mentioned, but the Great War was not. Women still wore long skirts and 'sunshades' (evidently some sort of bonnet, not a parasol or tinted spectacles). I worked out that the time setting must have been Edwardian or perhaps early in the reign of George V before the war. The story was melodramatic, the characters were usually histrionic, and the plot was almost transparent. Still, I kept reading because it was entertaining in its absurdity. The male love interest spent years traipsing Australia, South Africa and Central America on big game hunts and other manly activities. Was he hunting jaguars and iguanas in C. America? It was never revealed. This was a very creepy book, in its own way. I read the notes about the author and learned Haynes was born in 1865. She had some sort of degenerative disease that wheelchair bound her. She was an ardent feminist who lived in London but created her stories mostly from her imagination and remembrance of an earlier age. Her books are said to be a bridge between popular Victorian-Age books and ones of the Jazz Age in the 1920s. She died in 1929 and her reputation faded. Perhaps unjustly, but I really don't think she could ever have given Agatha Christie or Sayers much competition. But if a reader is in the right mood to read a 'real' throwback, Miss Haynes did a creditable job!

If you are worried about the couches in an L-shape then maybe across from each other would be preferable. A table and chairs in the space by the small window then? Is there room for that? Do you have a table to try there? It's hard to tell not being there. Can you take more photos showing how the room relates to nearby spaces and what kind of space there actually is? A room diagram would help but I know how annoying that is to hear. To answer your basic question, what kind of tables to have… Sorry to digress to arrangement but that helps dictate the tables… Anything but ottomans. Those sofas are so big and so overstuffed. The last thing you need is something that looks like a big pillow. You are at the beginning of your lives and I don't think those sofas will last long. So I also wouldn't try to hard to make the tables go with the sofas. With a new family starting, you likely aren't ready for investment pieces that might be damaged by toys. I like the idea of investing in furniture designed for outdoor living for young families. When you buy all new replacement furniture, you will then have tables for your outdoor space you aren't even thinking about now. Outdoor furniture can be very pretty, and when the baby barfs on it or spills cereal you take it outside and hose it down, let it dry and bring it back in. The furniture, not the baby. My guess is you don't want a coffee table with reclining sofas. You'd rather have lightweight tables that can be moved around to wherever you need them at the moment. Make sense? See how pretty outdoor tables can be?