Kumar, ditto on "edit and remove email address" in your first post. This is where you can get help and ideas for designing your back yard, but not really where some one will hand you a plan. There's a fair amount of work involved. You'll need to provide more information in order to get help and be willing to assemble the information you get back into some sort of plan. One picture does not really show the extent of the back yard. If you stood next to the center of the back of the house and took overlapping shots while panning the yard (all shots taken from same position) then we could get a better feel for what is there now. In order to get control of weeds, you'd need all areas to be mowed turf, heavily mulched, or thickly planted. The combination that will work best will depend on your needs and desires, and the existing conditions. In order to get help in figuring out what arrangement will work best, provide the additional photos and more information about how you will use your yard.

It depends on your needs. Do you need a utility area in which to hide things? Or a place for kids things? Or would it be better to plant a large flowering shrub that grows higher than the fence and creates additional interest? If you have a bed in front of the c.l. fence, it's possible to lessen the length of the fence run so that it doesn't penetrate into the yard so much. You could shorten it by as much as 1/3 or 1/2, depending on the width of the bed that acts to protect people from getting too close to the drop off.

Sorry about the confusion. The "+" sign is a symbol representing the center of a plant. The circle represents its perimeter. In this case, it represents a small tree. The "." symbol is the same thing. In this case it represents a shrub form. The shapes in between the patio and house are generic plants ... there only to give the plan a vague sense that plants in that space are possible. When looking down from above (as in a PLAN) all individual plants are going to look like a circle with a center. The scalloped edge thing is a plant MASS .... where smaller plants are amassed together such that you do not see the individual, but only the perimeter of the group. Here, it's all generic and doesn't yet matter about the plants. I'm only showing them to say that "some plants can fit in this space." At this point, all you need to care about is the patio. The hardscape (patio) comes first. The plantings are subordinate and will comply with whatever way the patio ends up being. Since you don't want a deck, whatever steps you have will come fairly near the door. You'll still need a landing at the door (rather than immediately stepping down as that would be cheap looking and feeling, such as what one would expect to see in a mobile home situation) which is why I suggest make it and steps full width of the wall face. It will work and look much better than if you try to make it only one door width, as it is now. You only need 4 risers for the set of steps. You want a small patio. There is no need or reason to make a contrived or convoluted set of steps with this small, simple need. Keep them spacious and simple and you will have a nice finished package. Get cute or clever and you might like it for a while, but others will wonder why you bothered or the next owner may dislike it. Simple, well functioning steps will work best. You can glamourize them in the construction details, if that suits your taste. If you want something other than straightforward, it would be best if you sketch it out in plan view, and then I'd be happy to react to what you've proposed, giving the pros and cons. I think I mentioned before but did not see your answer .... you'll need to figure out the total square footage that you want for patio space. It doesn't need to be to the square inch. You just need to get into the ballpark on it. While I'm not working to scale -- just proportion -- I estimate the patio in the sketch to be about 170 s.f., which does not count the pure walking space in front of the steps. Including that, it might be around 200 s.f. Keep in mind that in order to do the same functions (cook and eat) requires a little more room outdoors than it does indoors. Outdoors, people move about faster and flail their arms more :-).

I would center the garden area with chicken coop on the backside of the pool. Make a wider grand entrance and transition possibly using an arbor. The way you show it to the side does not balance. If possible I would put the shed along a wall on the back of the house convenient for the pool suppplies. I would place all gardening tools in an area back with the chickens as this will be closer for gardening as well. Best wishes!