If you had a magic wand, what would your goals be then? What benefits would you be hoping to get out of a front yard?

Start us out with a photo of the whole front yard/house front in one picture. (Try not to get too much sky or street, if possible.)

Mostly the front yard is a place for my 7 yr olds to play. I'd like to have a bunch of wild flowers or flowers they can pick and play with. Maybe some large rocks or stumps to jump around on. I was thinking about making a place they could dig in as well. Our soil is pretty sandy.
This is the whole yard. the other side of the driveway has flagstone which I plan on eventually taking out and replacing with concrete. I included a picture from last fall as it's a little easier to see the yard with less grass. It is not level at all, it goes up from the street but then down to the side. You can see the retaining wall the neighbors built when they made their yard level (long before we moved in).

I'm not asking you to define what the yard is now (a playground,) or how you would resolve making some changes to it (rocks to jump on & wildflowers to pick.) I'm asking you what benefits you expect to get out of making changes ... such as: remain a place for the kids to play, look nice, fit into the neighborhood, enhance the house appearance, be a place for lounging, hide a view, improve pedestrian access to the house or give the car more room for parking, etc. (These are EXAMPLES ... not dictation of what you necessarily want.) So ... not looking for HOW to fix it. Looking for how you would recognize if it was fixed. I.E.:

• the kids could play
• it's easier to park the car
• it's easier for people to get to the porch
• it's prettier
• the neighbor's love it
• the electric box is not as visible
• it's easier to care for
• etcetera

Is there not a backyard for the kids to play in?

Kids do not usually dig in the dirt, but in a sandbox.

For background info., it would be good to provide a picture that shows the whole house and whole front yard in a a single photo, but with as little street and sky as possible. (Don't take the camera 1/4 mile away.) :-)

• prettier/looks nicer
• easier to maintain
• better path to the backyard (we have gates on both sides, the one on the right has an incomplete path to it but is the one we used to take the lawn mower to the backyard as it has a sloped path in the backyard versus the other side which has steps down)
• a path of some sort the sidewalk to the front porch.. because the girls will make one if there isn't one already there

the girls like to play in dirt not in sand.... they prefer it for some reason. but I probably should make something in the backyard for them. I included the Google picture of the house because it seemed like a pretty good picture of the front. its current state is the one with the bikes and trikes

Keep in mind that wildflowers are not necessarily easy to maintain. There is a common misconception that one can simply plant them and then walk away, but that's not the case. A good deal of maintenance (such as weeding) may be involved to get them to a point where they are somewhat self-sufficient and attractive (though that last quality is relatively subjective).

I recommend reading Thomas Rainer & Claudia West's book, "Planting in a Post-Wild World", for inspiration.

In the revised list of benefits-desired, I don't see anything about the front yard being a play area. There is a bench under the tree but nothing about the front yard being an area for sitting. As per wanting a path to connect the city walk to the front porch, I see this gian path that is also a driveway. The house is not set far back. Will this not work as the path? Is it blocked by cars such that the path is rendered null? The flagstone could make a path and it looks like someone tried to use it to widen the driveway. But it's not going to make a good path unless it is installed properly. If not on a proper base and mortared in, it will be difficult to use and maintain. Yet, if someone would install it correctly, it looks like it would be capable of taking care of any pedestrian path needs that you have. If it won't be installed properly, it would be better to get rid of it as it would be just more things in the way.

Speaking of "in-the-way," that is the number one impediment to maintenance that I see. The yard is full of stuff sitting around, so mowing would be a huge chore of moving things out of the way and then moving them back again, or to somewhere else. Even the lower limbs of the tree are in the way of yard maintenance, The lowest ones should be removed in lieu of new ones growing from a higher up position.

Good point made by saccharum that wildflowers are not going to add lower maintenance for this type of actively used setting.

It would be better to have any recreational digging done in the backyard as it directly conflicts with your goal of wanting better appearance for the front yard. It's going to boil down to one or the other but not both coincidentally.

The thing to get started on first is making a decision about the flagstone. Will it be used or won't it. If not, dispose of it or find another use for it. Then decide about the other things in the yard and if they can be used elsewhere or if they should be gotten rid of.

Give us a picture that shows the transition between front yard and right side yard ... where a path would start and where it would go.

Most communities frown upon planting wildflowers in your front lawn. It's not a real attractive look. I'm surprised you haven't already received a citation for your yard being overgrown. If you don't have the time or the desire for landscaping, I would remove all the "stuff" and just plant grass.

It's hard to be certain, but your tree looks like an ornamental plum that is on its last legs. For some reason builders and cities are enamored with these trees, but they don't live long and they often decline within 10 years of planting well before they fade away to dead sticks and branches. The size of the trunk shows it to be quite old which means it probably won't live much longer. You might consider removing it now and replacing it with something more suitable. A tree might not be the best thing for your yard which isn't very big, it conceals what looks like an attractive porch and entrance that could be an asset displayed more suitably from the curb without it. Right now the most attractive feature of your house is obscured by it, making the most unattractive feature, the garage, the only thing you see from the street.

I do need to just get rid of the flagstone - or at least the part that I've already pulled up. Whoever had it installed obviously didn't do it right which is why I hate it and started to remove part of it last summer. I will probably have to keep the rest though because I don't have the money to put anything else in those spots. I thought about using the extra flagstone to complete the path to the gate, but that's just a temporary fix because I won't be able to install it right. I'll get a picture of the area when I get home.

yes the driveway is a perfect way to get to the front porch. I guess I was indicating I'll probably want to put some round stones true the center of whatever I make that big part in the middle into, because my kids will continue to walk through the middle of it regardless of their being a perfectly good driveway to walk up.

The plum tree is on its way out - we probably should have had it removed when we had the dead tree in the back removed about a month ago, but we haven't decided exactly what to do with the front yet so we just had him trim a bunch of the dead branches off of it. It looks tons better than it did (not saying much I know).

Our neighborhood doesn't have an HOA and we are back in a cul-de-sac so nobody particularly cares about our mess of a yard. Or actually they probably do but they don't say anything to us.. :)

I have thought about pulling everything and just putting on grass but then I have to mess with the sprinkler system (or actually have somebody else messed with it) and it's hard to tell from the pictures but none of the ground is even.
so is there an easy way to kill off all that weedy grass or is it just going to be get out there and manually pull it all?

You could spray a weed and grass killer such as Round-Up.

Where I live, the city will ticket you if your grass gets above a certain height, it's part of code enforcement. But, usually they only do it because someone complained.

Until you have a plan on paper, making your front yard into something nice is going to seem like a vague dream. The plan spells out what goes where, but not the time frame in which it will be installed/transformed. You can do that as you are able. With a plan, you can still get to a finished place even if you do it at tortoise speed. To create a plan requires analyzing what's wrong with the existing yard and thinking about the direction it needs to go. The questions I've asked prior are an attempt to help you get your thinking organized about what your expectations are. (Not how to solve them.)

"I'll probably want to put some round stones true the center of whatever I make that big part in the middle into, because my kids will continue to walk through the middle of it..." What do you mean by "round stones"? This makes it sound like you have something in mind already. And I don't know what "that big part in the middle" is. It seems like you are trying to jump ahead of the program and not get the thinking about overalls goals settled first. We still need to know if the front yard is going to be a play area.

I don't see how it will be resolution to leave in place part of the flagstone that is not well installed. It would be better to install it correctly, or get rid of it. It's one of the things in the yard that is making maintenance harder, or impossible.