KarinL: That's a fair question, and I actually did more or less know what I was getting into with 5 acres, but poor planning on my part made it about the WHOLE 5 acres. The usual Montana Homestead way, whether 5 or 500 acres is you concentrate around the house as your main "canvas." The mistake here is we have made the canvas too large. In all reality, using the whole thing wouldn't be inherently bad, but requires some additional planning. Example are the Olive Trees we have beyond the lawn. The grass out there is kind of nasty brohm grass, which isn't irrigated. Most of our moisture is from snow, so by mid July, anything not watered is brown. So, I have a nice little 10' radius green patch in the middle of high brown. I mow the field to offset this. My preference would be to simply let the prairie grass grow without the little "landscape islands" I have now. I'm not sure what farmland looks like up there, but out here, you'll often see a 20-100acre plot with a house in the middle of it. A lot of times, the only way to tell there's a house is that it's surrounded by trees, which are the only trees on the property. I'm not big on blocking the views, but that same basic concept would be okay. I really don't want smaller, I just want more efficient, if that makes sense, and more deliberate. I'm meeting with a designer next week out here, so I'm hopeful he can help me get things under control. Point well taken though. One thing I've been saying is the bank should require you add $10-15k for a tractor into the mortgage on any lot bigger than 2 acres. ;->

This isn't a 'shady' area. It is an area that gets decent sun. Shade plants can often handle an eastern exposure, but not always. Start by deciding what you would like it to look like *in the winter*. Deciduous shrubs look like dead sticks. So it is usual to plant shrubs that have some sort of color during the winter. Instead of the hydrangea, a blue colored conifer like a blue juniper would provide that color all year, then a shorter, flowering shrub could be planted in front. There are also gold conifers. BTW, the shrubs on the left are probably some sort of flowering shrub. I'd get them ID'ed before yanking them out. A lot of things are looking unusually ratty after this winter, and they may just need a bit of time and some pruning to look decent.

How much wider will the drive be? I am starting to frown upon artificial turf. It is expensive so many people in my area settle for a small patch the size of a through rug and then pour rocks all around it. I much prefer something like Doug has done above. One thing about Dougs design that is so nice is that I can see the path and it is not flanked by shrubs. It make the entrance more inviting.

The lawn is the easy part. Post this picture in the Lawn Care forum to get a head start. It is likely too late to do a great renovation, but you could drop a mix of fescue, rye, and Kentucky bluegrass as a start. But lets start with the soil. You probably hate it. If you think you need more topsoil, you don't. If anything I might be inclined to remove some of the crown in the yard to improve drainage toward the street. With a basement the last thing you want to do is create a dam that backs up rain and melting snow into the house. If you look at the bricks on the house, there should be a bottom brick. The bottom of that brick is the sill of the house. Measure down 4 inches and that is where the top of the soil should be. If you have soil higher than 4 inches below the sill, then consider removing some. I see houses every day where the owners have brought in topsoil to "improve" the soil. That doesn't work. New soil is not better soil. Regardless of whether you remove soil or leave it all, it can be improved. This soil looks desiccated which is very hard on the microbes in the soil. It is the microbes that develop a healthy soil. Get 2 hoses, 2 turbo-type oscillator sprinklers, and a Y type splitter for your hose faucet. Also get a hose end sprayer that has a bottle for applying liquids. Put about 4-5 ounces of shampoo into the sprayer bottle and fill it with water. Spray the shampoo over the yard evenly until the bottle is empty. Then it is time to water that shampoo in. Arrange the hoses and sprinklers to cover the lawn on full sweep. Then put out tuna cans to catch the water around the yard. Time how long it takes to fill all the tuna cans. For my oscillator it takes 8 full hours, so you're in this for awhile. If you see runoff at any point, immediately stop watering and let the moisture soak into the soil for 15 to 30 minutes. Then restart the watering and the timer. Stop as often as needed to prevent runoff. When the cans are full stop the timer. The time on the timer is the time you will be watering in the future unless or until you install underground sprinklers. The shampoo followed by the deep watering is all you need to do to reawaken the soil microbes. If you want to make them really happy, apply an organic fertilizer. Organic fertilizers feed the microbes and keep your soil healthy. This will give your yard a huge boost for whatever grass or planting you do in the future. Once you have an inch of water in the soil, that might be the last time you need to water this year. You should see the existing grass respond as well as old and new weeds. That is all good. If you do not seed grass this fall, like immediately, you should know that spring is a poor time to seed new grass. Why? Because spring is when the summer annual weeds are sprouting. Crabgrass is the main culprit, but there are others. Fall is better simply to avoid those weeds. But if you do seed in the spring, just know that everything can be fixed next August when you seed again. Lawn care is as easy as watering (properly), mowing, and fertilizing. Watering is easy enough with the oscillators, so don't get excited about spending thousands on an in-ground system. You won't need to mow until you have grass. For now a string trimmer would work wonders. I've "mowed" my entire lawn with a string trimmer, so it can be done. As for fertilizing, apply any organic fertilizer at 15-20 pounds per 1,000 square feet. That helps the soil which help the plants. Read some posts on the Lawn Care forum and see if you want to get involved with that.