I will not be keeping my windows open and plan to not heat see below. My greenhouse is made of glass and wood all of which I pulled out of contraction dumpsters. I have enough glass for a 500 square foot surface with 4 layers of glass. This will give me a 37 foot by 15 foot tall lean-to green house at 8 feet wide against the south side of my house . The outside layer of glass is hermetically sealed. The 3 inside glazes breath some. The inside is kept humid. When the surface get cold the vapor in the air condenses and give the heat of fusion to the inside air. This keeps the inside warm. When the out side gets below freezing the vapor must condense first (520 cal./gram H2O) then must release another 80 cal. per gram h2o to the in side air thus keeping it warm inside. The outer glass surface is locked at 32 F until all the moisture on its surface is ice. The next layer of glass must go through the same, then the third layer must succumb to this solid ice frosty state, The frosty state of moisture on the glass will greatly decrease the amount of heat that can slip through. This alone probable guaranties my safety to 10 F for many days in a row. I heat the growing medium with the south basement wall. The R value of it is about R-4, While the other 3 walls are R-150 Minimum an loose near 0 heat. I heat the basement to about 75 F. There are no ducts to heat any where else in the house. With living area walls at R-40 they loose heat slowly enough to stay warm with the heat in the basement just bleeding up. The warm basement wall keeps the greenhouse soil at 60 F min. My annual natural gas heating bill is under $200 . If the temperatures drop below 0 F I will have to place out buckets of warm water to supply the needed humidity to power the gasses phase change heating system. Steve

Yikes! I can see where that is a problem. I had a 14 year old who could not make the 4 stairs to the ward so I placed a piece of the turf on the porch. She used it all the time, but it did get rank! My yard install took a full week with new drainage and lots of underlaying stone and sand. So I am sure that is why it still works for me.

Have you considered using a gravel binder / permeable resin on the gravel option? You would then be able to walk on, leaf blow, scrub, etc the gravel without it going anywhere. I've walked on pathways like this before at a local arboretum. It seemed suprisingly stable, and attractive. The gravel didn't look like it was coated with anything at all. Individual stones were rounded and roughly .5" / 1 cm in longest dimension. I imagine there was some kind of foundation / compacted base layer beneath rounded gravel top providing structural stability. Full disclosure, I have zero knowledge of the cost, difficulty of installation, or maintenance involved with using said product. I've only seen it used and thought it neat! With turf, I'd be concerned about the oak tannins from acorns and leaves staining it over time. This would be less noticeable, perhaps even desirable, on a darker coloured rock. UV degradation will also occur (eventually) and cause further discoloration on the turf. I feel like rock is the classier, timeless albeit likely more expensive option.

Beautiful!!!! I bet you already feel more empowered by having that plan! :-) And how lucky for you ... to have just the right size yard for someone with "no artistic ability whatsoever" Haha. Here are a few suggestions that might help make the plan easier for you to use. First, I would orient it with the house at the top of the page and the street at the bottom. This would be more like how people think of, and visualize houses and yards ... seeing them from the front. Then, I would go ahead and add the other side of the garage and yard so that you had the full front. When you get to planting, you'll want to visualize the whole house & yard, not just part of it. Keep the drawing you have with measurements so you can refer to them if you need to, but for working out your ideas, you want to have the cleanest, emptiest drawing possible. Make a copy in which you remove all the shading, hatching and dimensions. For now, only show the house, porch & step, drive, walk, tree trunks, back of curb & property line. If you want to keep the dimensions on the same page, move them to outside of the work area. (Most of the time, if I want them, I write the measurement next to the line but omit the dimension lines, as I know what the number refers to. I would dimension like you have it if for someone else, but keep of the way as much as possible for myself in order to make it cleaner.) Make the house a heavier line so it reads as the largest, boldest structure on the property. At the beginning of brainstorming of the project, don't think about plants at all. Limit yourself to thinking about hardscape ... whatever you'll do to the walk, drive and whatever hardscape might occur out in the yard. Once that is complete, you can put is aside and work on a revised based plan which will include the new hardscape changes. If you want any help while you are working on hardscape, it would be good to start a new, uncluttered thread for it. (This one has a lot of conversation about other stuff in it.) Bring the most updated base plan and the most relevant pictures (the ones where you pan the scene from the front, and also the picture from across the street showing the overall house and yard.)