beware of the "welcome to my garage look that you can get with a wider driveway and less interruption of the view to the garage that the tree now provides. Also consider more than the stairs. Do you want to get more space out of your small front yard for purposes other than mowing exercise and a foreground to your house? If so, consider a retaining wall or more than one with a walkway and steps incorporated through it. I don't know if this street and/or your personality makes it such that you would want to spend time on that side of the house or not, but you should go through that mental exercise. I don't have a problem with bisecting the lawn to make a walk/stairs that would re-center the attention of the curb view of the house from the driveway to the front door.

Congratulations on your new house! It's so much fun having a space to work with but it also can be overwhelming sometimes. Everyone is different when trying to design spaces. Some people can "see" the space they're creating as they learn about different plants, and some people have to see it for real. I'm definitely in the second group. So what I found to be the most helpful is to look at different spaces that I liked, take pictures, and then work backwards to ID the plants, where they work best, what type of soil, and water requirements they'd need. Where you live in makes a BIG difference. Acid or alkaline soil. Temp ranges, rainfall- lots of things that play into plant selection. There's a nice, basic book that I liked when I started out "Texas Home Landscaping" by Greg Grant and Roger Holmes. I see it in box stores a lot but your library might have a copy. And I don't know if you're near San Antonio, but the botanical gardens has a section called "Watersaver Walk" that has I think ? 8 houses mocked up with different landscape designs. Same space, totally different looks. Have fun. Take your time. Don't worry if you kill some of the plants- it's part of the process. Keep reading these boards- some of the nicest plant lovers you'll ever meet hang out here. Hope this helps- Lisa This post was edited by southofsa on Sat, May 24, 14 at 4:32

You can work off the photo, but -- as always -- it needs to be converted into a PLAN first ... a plan being, more or less, a map of your yard. It allows you to place the plants in the right place. Just draw the components of the yard -- house, walk, drive, trees, lamp post, etc on a piece of graph or plain paper, measuring everything out in order to keep it in relative scale. 1"=10' is a good scale to work with. You could also use 1/8"=1' or 1/4"=1', though the latter might require a fairly large piece of paper. After you get the base information down, you can start drawing where plants would go. Do this on copies of the original or use tracing paper in order to avoid lots of erasing. One tip: don't draw individual plants unless they are standalone specimens ... like a tree or shrub that stands alone. First draw the bed, then draw the shapes that the plant collections occupy within the bed. If you have a survey, you can begin with that as the basis of the drawing as it will show the location of the major constructed elements. As I mentioned previously, you can clutter up the simple scheme I gave you as much as you like, but keep in mind that when you do, the end result will look cluttered, and require more maintenance to keep up with. The scheme I offered accomplishes your basic goals, but allows you a great deal of control of its ultimate "flavor" through the selection of plant materials. You have options for tweaking bed shape and other details, and adding some "punctuation" (those special plants that excite you and you can find a good spot for.)

Monique, curb appeal doesn't rest primarily on selecting certain plants. It rests more on bed layout, plant forms & sizes, arrangement, organization and adding the right amount of variety. The picture you've provided shows mainly the house. But landscaping -- curb appeal -- has as much more to do with responding to the SETTING as it does with just what's in front of the house. It would be good if you could return to the exact spot* where the first picture was taken and swing the camera leftward in order to show us what's over there. The picture needs to slightly overlap with the existing one. Then swing the camera to the right, slightly overlapping again, and show us what's over there. That way we can see the broad view of the entire front yard. Also, with your truck out of the way, move the camera closer in and take another picture of the front entrance portion of the house (from the garage wall to the fence.) *If you can't return to the exact spot to match the first picture, disregard it and take all new pictures that pan the scene. Any chance on widening the walk that goes to the front door? That would help with curb appeal, too.