It's a vast improvement over the shrub-engulfed house we first saw, merely by being cleaned up. One thing that jumps out to me as not enough, is the groundcover, which are few and far apart. The goal is usually to get groundcover to grow into a solid mass for the best look and so as not to need top dressing with mulch anymore and still have weed suppression. But I imagine you'll be doing some tweaking over the next year. As far as watering, it's hard for someone, by remote, to tell you if you've watered long enough. There are a lot of variables in how you might be doing it and with what equipment. If in doubt, dig down and see. It won't take you long to discover the right timing formula.

Do you want help with a landscape design or do you just want planting suggestions? There's a pretty big difference between the two :-) If you want to develop a landscape design, one of the first things you need to do is determine what you want from your garden and how you intend to use it. If you do a search of this forum, you will turn up a recent thread titled "Landscape Design Forum FAQ - Improved" that will present a checklist of issues for you to review that will help you focus your thoughts and clarify your requirements. It involves examining your property in detail and evaluating your lifestyle so that you develop a garden/landscape that "works" for you. Maintenance, budget considerations and the function of the garden are all considered. At that point you may decide that help with plant selection is all you need. That's a relatively easy process and can be approached in just the manner lacyvail outlined. Many nurseries will have staff that can assist in this process. If you are unfamiliar with plants, visiting local public gardens or arboreta or even large garden centers can offer a wide display of plantings in situ that may inspire. Often, it is just more efficient and economical to hire a professional for design assistance. This avoids a great deal of expensive trial and error, escalates the knowledge base and shortcuts the entire process. You can also do a great deal of self-teaching if you can afford the time and are willing to expend the effort - there are tons of very good DIY landscaping texts on the market and most home improvement centers or book stores will have a bunch available. But you are not going to come away from this forum with a landscape plan in hand. That's not how it works. You may get some good advice on how to proceed in the process, you may even get some specific plant suggestions, although at this point I believe they would be very premature, but the development of a "landscape design" is something that will take study, time, effort and careful consideration, either yours or a professional designer's.

We've hired two. Each cost $125.00 per hour. In our case essentially both were a waste of money. The first one was well known, had kitchen's featured in magazines, won contests from Subzero and similar companies. She actually had great ideas but was constantly screwing up. She mis-measured on several occassions and I was never confident it was right. She would produce drawings that were impossible to visualize (the peninsula ended up overlapping a window in one drawing). I had requested over and over a prep sink in the island. The drawings came back without it and when I called her on it she said she didn't think it was needed but would request it be added. She had the drawings redone, and subsequently billed me the time to redo them. She called one day in the beginning and told me she stopped at the flooring store to look at floor choices (this was before we even had a design) and I was billed for the time! Keep in mind this was NOT something she asked me about in advance. We ended up parting ways after she became ill and couldn't continue with the project, which kept me from having to fire her. I knew she was capable of some beautiful work and I wanted it to work with her so badly that initially I kept making excuses for her . In the end, I spent about 2k and basically had nothing to show for it (except some ideas) Her plans had the beautiful elements & materials I wanted but not the additional space. The next one was a very nice lady with good ideas but they always exceeded our budget. We spend about 1600.00 with her. She made up a plan that had "some" of the space we wanted but in the end the budget would not allow us to add on the space and keep the materials we wanted. I could accept that, however knowing it in the beginning would have saved us a lot of $$-- Both designers knew out of the gate that our main objective was to add space and that if we were going to invest in construction of an addition, I needed the kitchen to have the elements and materials I really wanted. I truly believe the 2nd designer thought she was working within the budget and didn't purposely decieve us, where I believe the first one was milking us for any time she could but wanted to give us a knock your socks off kitchen in the small space we already had. The nice thing about independent designers was that they aren't married to a specific brand. The first designer worked a lot with a local custom cabinetmaker and for about 12K we were getting painted white cabinetry that looked beautiful! I later went to Home Depot for a "free" design, (which by the way was not free unless we paid for an in home measurement, at least in my area)and the KD there used our construction design to quote cabinets for us and a medium quality was about 25k!) So I think you end up paying for the designer one way or another~ We never ended up doing our kitchen since our wants exceeded our means. We've decided to move all together and while we can't "design" the kitchen we can possibly make some modifications and i am already stressing about the whole process all over again.

shanghaimom had some great suggestions of how to prepare to meet with a designer. Collect pictures to help explain what you're trying to accomplish. Hiring a designer usually involves a retainer and written agreement. Designers do their best when presented with a design problem & a set of criteria like budget, time frame, colors, style & existing conditions. Tell a designer what you 'think', not what you 'feel'. Save that for your shrink. Designers are not hired to be your personal 'design cheerleader'. Don't forget that agreeing to work together on a project goes both ways. The designer has the right to say NO if your list of goals is ill defined or unrealistic. Many designers/decorators in furniture stores have no schooling or experience designing, but they are excellent salespeople. That is not to say that everyone who attended a school that specialized in interior design is good. The same can be said of doctors and lawyers. It's very likely the store designer's sole compensation is a draw against commission. No furniture sale, no compensation, none. They're only making money when you're buying furniture. Not all design solutions involve furniture. Finally, not all designers can work in all styles. Design is an artistic business. For example, I don't possess a good knowledge of Williamsburg, Colonial or Art Deco styles & could not make informed recommendations to a client, so I don't work in those styles. No designer can be good at everything, You wouldn't go to a restaurant known for excellent Italian meals and ask them to cook Chinese. So find a designer whose general styles you like, not the reverse.