Tuchina- I'm not a professional designer, just a professional dreamer. With your situation--student, limited funds, existing trees, soil, and other constraints--a great deal depends on who you are and what brings you joy. For me, I love research, asking questions, gaining know-how, envisioning possibilities (even financially impossible possibilities). I love being outside in the garden as much as possible, so spring and fall clean up, bed prep, plant transplanting, as well as creating places I like to eat, sit, meditate, and read are important. Working to create these spaces is something that I find entertaining. And I don't mind very slow progress. I purposely set my annual garden goal very low: Is it better this year than last year? And, though it's been slow, I am getting there. I agree that creating a sort of master plan may help you move forward. But it's okay to plan to take the trees down in your master plan, even if you can't do this for a couple of years. That question, of course, may also depend on how long you will live in this house and whether completing your schooling will mean you will be trying to sell. If you plan to work in the same city / town where you are now in school and this will be your home for the next 10 years, then consider a master plan strongly geared toward what you would really love this place to be. On the front end, don't limit your dreaming perspective. It will, after all, potentially be your back yard for a good chunk of your existence. If your time frame is considerably les, then moderate the master plan toward the objective of good stewardship of the yard and home and doing what you decide will give you best value when you need to sell. Once that's out of the way I second Bahia's advice about books, gardens in the neighborhood, gardens and parks in your city, botanical gardens. Go on a picture safari this spring. Take garden tours in your town or region. Lots of notes. Keep a garden journal, especially describing vignettes (little created scenes and settings in a landscape) that, perhaps for some as yet unknown reason, seem to stop your heart. Do the same with garden pictures in magazines and seed catalogs. If you can cut out the pictures, then put them in the garden journal. Later on, you will have to deal with the fact that some of these photos are touched up like runway models, but, nevertheless, if the picture seems to speak to your heart, it's worth beginning to ask yourself "Why?" Now, much of what you capture this way will have nothing to do with your current backyard. I told you I was a professional dreamer! But it is still very much worth learning what it is that you love in the garden, don't you think? Apparently, you found something wonderful about having a fig tree, right? My mom planted one a few years ago and it's a lovely thing ... Back to planning process. You also need to ask yourself a lot of questions about what you want to be able to do in your backyard. You've mentioned that there is no patio -- Would you like one? Do you want a place to drink a cup of coffee in the morning? A table and chairs for friends to sit outside and talk deep thoughts past midnight? A place to groom the pups? You've mentioned a back fence that the neighbor put up but does not maintain. You've put up a second fence ... I think to keep the pups in the yard. Not sure. So this brings up some things you need or want: Enclosure adequate to keep dogs in the yard, and A way to mitigate the ugliness of the neighbor's fence. Now, remember, at this stage you're still just playing. So you can write anything in the whole wide world down as a "I'd love to have ...". Nobody needs to see your list. do you want a fountain or water feature? Do you really wish you had adequate sun for a vegie or herb garden? Do you want to teach your pups dog agility? (Don't laugh! That's what's in my brother's back yard. All these wonderful fun things for his dogs.) Or, maybe you'd just like a nice patio area, maybe some containers of flowers spilling over, and a real lawn dotted with much smaller (younger) ornamental trees and shrubs? Information about what you want and what you need comes first. And I'd even say it comes before you limit the discussion with budget. Trust me, mine is miniscule, but I am working to save up for a major change. I know what I want because I worked on my "master plan". I'm hoping something in this is helpful. If it were me, I'd try to sketch out your main design, I would (and did) get a consultation with a designer (oh, meant to ask, are there any landscape design schools around? You can sometimes get help through a student looking for experience), and then I'd focus on one small area. For me, I'd be planning to nix the trees, so I'd check out the cost. Then that might be all that I could do this year. Or I'd get myself a patio so I could sit sipping a glass of wine, contemplating the possibilities ...

Same here, +om. Dumb phone here that I hardly use or carry. My wife answers the phone in the house as I'm usually outside. I just have an old Canon point and shoot camera that is far out of date and manage a picture or two. ;-) No bird baths or feeders here also, because of the ponds I dug with a bulldozer years ago. Feeders also concentrate the birds for other bird predators. Some 'Birders' have platform feeders just for that purpose so they can watch and photograph the predators in action. I see enough of that naturally. I'm building a giant bonsai, miniature old growth sub-alpine forest, on a windy, rocky ridge. Whew! It still needs some work....always does. (It's not work, it's play!) Sedums and other small scale groundcovers are going to be added. The azalea will be pruned to look like a small deciduous tree. Going small scale enables a lot more interest in a limited area......and me with 10 acres. What am I thinking? Sure wasn't along the lines of a perennial cottage garden. Mike

To be frank, I think the raised wall waterfall as it is situated, and the palms flanking it, are space-destroying elements. These elements are placed in the prime "window" to the water views. Now all of the water view is broken up into small, less important looking segments. We use nature's ideas (like a grove of trees) in order to make artistic statements in the landscape that have some power. The grove is a single element made up of many small parts. Adding parts that are of a different artistic family will not make the whole element read stronger, but weaker. Suppose you are creating a hardwood floor. Would it look better to intermix many wood types -- oak, cherry, bamboo, etc.? It would look like a bargain basement mess! Your present groups of palms are single lines of widely spaced palms. To me they look skimpy even after I've added more. If anything, I'd consider beefing them up with even a couple more -- of same type plants -- to each group. Calling tubs of color a "container garden" makes it sound like a planter with a lot of variety. I think it would be much more powerful to have planters that contain a single variety, and possibly repeat them where there is room for another planter. These are the kinds of things that are figured out more or less toward the end of the planning process (since they are like furniture) after you know what space is available and where the permanently installed elements will be. For #6, what I mean by large flowering shrub is ... a large shrub that flowers! :-) The intent is to screen the neighbor's pool cage and give a sense of privacy. Therefore, it must be a shrub that is tall enough to do that. Well, why not specify that the shrub puts on a show at least once per year? And actually, it could be SMALL trees combined with a hedge behind, or some such thing. Or it could be an evergreen screen that doesn't flower but just looks really good anyway. The main idea is that is screens and looks good.

I know it's been a while but I'm back for some final help (hopefully!). After getting many quotes and having long wait times we finally have someone coming out Wednesday to do another walk thru before things begin. We have been busy prepping, weeding and leveling the space. We are using poured concrete and decided to do a rectanglar shape versus curved lines, below is an aprox layout. Final dilema are those dang trash, recycle and yard waste bins. They will not fit under the deck. My idea was to line all three up going S to N as seen in below drawing and then using some sort of privacy screening which would allow for less hardscape and some more planting space. My husband prefers to line them up along the fence going E to W and have more hardscape to pull them out. I am not sure how we would screen them though and be able to pull them out. I'll draw husband's preferred layout of receptacles in green. I know this seems like a small thing but I figure there is probably a simple solution? I've included some pictures of the space in question. And yes I know we still need to prune that Camelia :)