Low voltage lighting is great but it is commonly done incorrectly. Often gets assoiciated with a form of wiring that is simple and easy to do but it a lot of cases, it is more difficult than 120 volt circuits. To do it right I would use the industrial stainless steel transformer timer boxes. These are typically around $250 as to the $60 home depot plastic ones. They are necessary especially when lighting a house. Another situation is planning the wiring. A big mistake is "Well its low voltage so I don't need a big wire" Truth is, you need a bigger wire. Good to always use 12 gauge landscape cable but if the line is over 75 feet, have to go up to 10. A run really far like across a back yard is often 8 gauge wire. You also can't just run every light of one line. You typically run 4 seperate lines on a large installation. Put the first section of lights on the 1st section, 25 feet away start using the 2nd line, another 25 feet use the 3rd line. The fancy trasformer has multiple outputs, 12 volt, 13, 14, 15, and 16 volt. If the line is supplying lights that are on the other side of the house, use the 16 volt connection. That way by the time the electricity makes it to the lights, it looses 4 volts but still has the needed 12 volts to light up the light properly. I have seen many houses with bright lights on the left and dark on the right, that is because they use the standard home depot transformers, or don't plan the wiring layout. I've seen a lot of installers use underground well lights to light the house itself rather than the stick in the ground floods. They usually leave the wells up a bit so they dont get covered with mulch. But the well lights give a nice wide lighting angle. Its best to pick peices of the landscape like certain shrubs to light as to broad flood lighting. If the entire area is flooded, it looks more like security light than designer lighting. Just like in a living room, often artwork is lit with cans as to big fluoresent lights filling the entire room with gaudy light. Path way lights are nice too but I think it looks better to use a minimal ammount of high quality expensive fixtures as to a bunch of tiered path lights from home depot that you see in millions of yards in the US. There are really nice path lights out there that are made of brass, copper, fancy metal. Might try www.ccl-light.com They have a great variety of higher quality fixtueres. They also carry the stainless steel transformers and large spools of landscape wire. They also carry a lot of surface mount deck lights, lights to light the house, well lights. The well lights would be good for both lighting the house but also for trees. Looks a lot neater when they are level with the ground than a flood light on a stake. You'll probably want one transformer for the back yard and one for the front. Also could put one on the left side yard and one on the right and put both front yard and back yard left lights on one and backyard/front yard right lights on the other. Just whichever divides out the best. Or if you don't have a lot of lights in the back yard, you may beable to put the entire system on one trasformer. They have them in all different sizes, just sometimes it is easier to bring the transformers close to where the lighting is to avoid lots of runs of cable (which is not cheap) Glad your looking into, landscape lights are great and good ones will last a long time and add value to the home. A big kit in a box from homedepot usually doesn't to the trick though :)

i would get rid of the tall thin tree at the corner of the house.. before it falls on the house.. or gets so tall.. it just looks out of place .... and i would get rid of the tall tree which i suspect is a pear [pic 2] ... in front of the front door ... its just gotten too big also.. and all out of proportion to every thing else ... i bet it was planted by the builder ... and then remove those you hate.. lifes to short ... and ... THEN .. once they are gone.. i would put together a plan to make a cohesive whole ... with the two huge plants.. everything else just looks squat ... and yuck .. those are technical terms.. if you dont know .... one of your design issues will be the height of the house.. versus the narrowness of the beds to work in ... and anything that gets tall enough to deal with that.. will put you back where you are now.. inside ten years ... around the neighborhood.. if you see other houses which you like the design.. snap a pic.. and we can interpret it for you ... so you can set some long term goals to accomplish .... this would be a good exercise.. even if you end up hiring out the job .... we need big city name to help you with ideas ... for your area ken

What cities are you close to? We can't guess your climate. Pictures from the corners of the yard would also be helpful.

To me, modern landscape design isn't about funky planters. It's about clean lines, repeated patterns, sharply clipped hedges, and orderly, geometric plantings. So with that in mind - I would remove the turf and enlarge the bed in front of the blank wall on the left to fill it. I would repeat one line of uniform plantings along the back of that bed. I might do a row of tall panicle hydrangea in back which will pop against the dark siding in summer. In front, I'd do ornamental grasses or alternatively boxwood in a linear or diagonal pattern. I'd repeat the same basic design in front of the garage. For the area below the front door landing, I'd probably do a clipped holly hedge for a clean, geometric look, but that's because I don't love the stone. You could add definition to the bed edges with a stone or metal edging. I would definitely not add hardscaping - it looks like your driveway takes up a big chunk of the yard as it is. If you want to change the existing hardscaping, that's another question. I would then add one container at the bottom of the steps and one by the front door, where I'd plant annuals. I do not like planting perrenials or evergreens in containers - it's a lot more maintenance and they do not perform as well, especially in climates with big temperature swings. And good containers cost a few hundred dollars or up to a couple thousand each, depending on size and material, so they will quickly double or triple your landscaping spend.