You mentioned that you might be entertaining the thought of flagstone surrounded by pebbles. If that's your desired direction then you might be served well by looking at the color of your house, the color of any existing tile or concrete outside and the color of any existing landscape rock so that you choose a flagstone that unites all of these units together. We are generally very lucky here in California that we have incredibly stocked landscape yards offering flagstone in a rainbow of colors and textures. From the midwest comes the mellow buff tones : From Hillside development From New England come the gray tones of Bluestone surrounded by our local California colored decomposed granite From Beach House Considered the least expensive $ flagstone in our area, the Arizona Flagstone have a color range from soft butter yellow , light brown, rose and deep rosey brown. It is extremeley easy to work with . It cuts like butter with a diamond saw and is splits dependably. From portfolioMay08.jpg From California Gardening Another possible consideration is 'urbanite', which is actually just broken up concrete pieces. From California Gardening Which ever medium you choose, a properly installed subbase is paramount.

I'm a lurker here who is a homeowner and not a pro, and has little design knowledge/ability (which is why i lurk!), but I have used EnviroStone! We just finished laying a 500 sq ft flagstone patio ourselves with it and are very pleased. EnviroStone is designed for wider joints (the same company has different products for narrow joints). For your application, I think you would need to be able to dig ALL of the mud out of each joint. There is a PDF you can download online with the EnviroStone specs/instructions and it says that you should not have any other filler material in the bottom of each joint, otherwise that can wash out from under the EnviroStone and make the joint unstable. I don't know whether they just say that to make you buy enough product to fill all of the joint depth, but it made sense to us, so we followed that. We had a base of 3" compacted crush-and-run (like crushed stone, i think), topped with 1" of granite sand (we got a landscape company to do that part). Then we levelled the flagstones in the granite sand, and then we filled in the joints with EnviroStone and watered down. So far (only 2 months), it looks great and the stones feel solid. It was also easy enough to install to be a DIY job (easy for me to say, as my brother and husband did it all!). I think having a solid/level base is important -- especially in the North where you get more frost movement (we are in Atlanta). I am adding a pic of our patio to show how wide our joints are. We did this as a DIY project, so I'm aware that it doesn't look like a pro job! Hope this helps -- if you decide your base is good enough and you can dig out all that mud, i think EnviroStone would be a good option.

If it's a flat surface and the ground can't slip away from under the slabs, they should hold, I would think, if you compact the dirt quite well. In your zone you probably don't have to do a crush base, could get away with just sand. We have a flagstone path like this, the stones aren't going anywhere.

It's a difference in neighborhoods and power companies sometimes. I've lived in places where I never saw a meter-reader either. Places where the boxes are very blocked and power company don't mind. I've been living where I'm at now for less than a decade and have seen readers 4-6 times, and there has been servicing to change the meter plates too. Couple years back the power company did some pole replacements, they started doing serious tree trimming along lines last year. This year my lines are getting done. Anywho.. Another thing to consider when thinking about planting in front of the meter box is how the power lines run from the house. It may not be wise to plant anything in the ground that could get too big or root too deep and potentially interfere with your lines. It may be a good idea to call your local diggers hotline to find out how the lines run from your house if you don't already know. In front of the basement window. Do you use that window for light into the basement? If so, consider a low growing something in front of it. If it's not so much for light, then you have more height options there. If you open it for air, perhaps fragrant plants would be nice. Not sure what's going on with your gutter and drainpipe, but you will probably need to fix that up before planting in stuff too. Does your grill usually live in that nook, or just parked there for the moment? If that's it's usual spot, consider planting nothing to the right of the drainpipe area, and instead finish off that nook proper for the grill to live there.