After seeing your neighbor's overview of your yard my first inclination would be to plant some tough, fairly fast-growing trees along your wall. This might also decrease the heat coming off that wall. Most nurseries would be able to advise you if you state your needs. As for the sod area, I've noticed that most people never really use that area, and it will take a lot of water and care. Just my opinion, you know your needs better. Rather than having a gazebo, why not develop the deck area more fully to make it really comfortable and inviting and use the area where the gazebo would be for some pretty but carefree plantings? Again, the nursery can advise you. That way you can enjoy all the different areas of your garden from the deck without any obstruction to your sight lines. I'm sorry if I've repeated what others may have already said. It's great that you have walls instead of some rickety fence around your property. That gives you a good basis. Another thought, would the vegetable garden be better in a more hidden area in a further corner of the property? So often that area doesn't always look terribly attractive. I'd plant some easy-care roses (some of the antique roses are great or modern shrub roses, not hybrid teas) so you can enjoy color and fragrance there. The best of luck with your plans. I'm sure it will be beautiful. Ingrid

My goodness, it was very interesting to look back and see what's here and what's now gone. Yesterday I dug out the overgrown spiderworts and replaced them with echinaceas. I always have loads of echinaceas reseeding so they're a big fill in when I'm ripping out. The bed with the yuccas is full of some weeds--it must get a major redo this fall. For the most part it all looks the same except things have filled in and gotten bigger. I probably have two dozen crepe myrtles here, all grown from seed I traded for on the forums. I took seeds from all around the country and mixed them together. The seeds were WS (probably in late January) and they germinated well in mid spring. The seedlings were kept in a holding be their first year--I was surprise to see some lavender blooms. The second year they were transferred to a back fence border where they were another year, after that I started moving them about the garden. I now have two crepe myrtle hedges and some extras still in the back fence border. Crepe Myrtles have a varied hardiness, usually to zone seven but some species can do zone six quite well. If you want to increase your crepe myrtles then trade for seeds from around the country and WS them all together. After a couple of years you will know which of them are hardy for your garden. It's three years time between sowing and seeing a blooming and prunable hedge from your crepe myrtle seeds--for me it was a grand experiment to see if I could succesfully germinate them with WS here in zone seven; I am absolutely delighted with my crepes. They're just about to start blooming too so that's really nice to see. T Here is a link that might be useful: Crepe Myrtle Seeds (nice hardiness data)

You're talking about English holly and similar forms. The one Ian suggested, for instance looks very different. But hollies are slow anyway, you would wait many years for the house to disappear. There are lots of good-looking strawberry trees around, what happened last winter depends on where you are. And what kinds of soils and exposures specific specimens are located in. Since you have indicated your location as Bothell things like arbutus and loquat that might be fine most years in Seattle could be problematic for you. Even as close in as Rhody Ridge it gets too cold for such plants. The old Garden Valley nursery on the south facing slope north and east of the Bothell-Woodinville interchange had a history of recording some really low temperatures. When I was at Molbak's recently there was frost injury to the flowers of 'Avondale' redbuds and winter hazels in the sales yard. The winter hazels at Wells-Medina nursery seen earlier the same day were not damaged. Really the wax myrtle was probably the ticket but something made you think it wouldn't do. You should go look at the wax myrtles at Children's and elsewhere that have been in place for some years. If the lack of conspicuous flowers is deterrent plant a Hooker willow with it. This native ouer coastal species is more handsome and conspicuous than the exotic pussy willow species that are presented here by garden centers, and grows wild mixed with the wax myrtle at Long Beach etc. The two similar growth habits look very well together. An English garden plant book suggests planting willows with hollies. Hooker willow + wax myrtle would be another version. Male Hooker willows produce large spectacular catkins. Both sexes bear large handsome leaves, blackish green on top and silvery beneath. Look for it in native plant collections at garden centers or order through the mail.

"The large deck ... is structurally sound, the boards are not in good shape." What exactly does "not in good shape" mean? ... that the surface is not good but otherwise they are OK ...? That sounds like a couple of decks that came with a house I once owned. They were functional but ugly from years of weathering and no attention whatsoever. They were transformed into completely acceptable, nice actually, merely with pressure washing, a quick, coarse sanding, and two or three coats of deck paint (not stain) applied with a paint roller. It was not a huge, horrible job and they looked almost as good as new. They were much easier to keep clean with a hard paint surface. The cost to fix it this way, if DIY, would be a couple hundred bucks. If not DIY, a few hundred ... vs. $17K. If you could get another dozen years our of your deck and have it look nice, too, would that be acceptable? Landscaping is a discipline where one must not ignore site conditions or impose unrealistic solutions if they expect to produce a result that is pleasant, lasting and maintainable. I question the overall direction of making a small porch with steps down to where all the landscape features would be. This seems intrinsically less useful than would be having a decent sized deck immediately off of the main living space. I see a grill but not a dining table. Where does the outdoor dining happen? If the kitchen is separated from outdoor dining by a full flight of steps, it will surely be made much more inconvenient. But the real deal-breaker for me is the imposition of "no groundcover," which is driven by unrealistic beliefs based on emotion, when the site itself is demanding groundcover for practical reasons: there is slope and there is shade. Are we really going to spend $50K in order to change this into flat, sunny ground? It's going to require significant retaining walls & grading in addition to all the other new hardscape and planting. On the subject of husband's allergies to pine, I presume you're talking about allergies to pine pollen (since contact with the plant itself can be easily avoided)? Getting rid of the pines is going to make virtually no difference if there are other pines in the neighborhood or region. During the pollen season, which lasts for a couple of weeks, it can blow statewide and there's no escaping it. One's best hope of avoiding it is to stay indoors as much as possible during that time. I think you should begin with the budget because it will determine what is possible vs. what is fantasy. Re-contemplate the goals ... not how to achieve them, but simply the objectives themselves ... what activities do we want to do outside? How convenient do we want them to be? How private should it be? ... etc.