For the most part it looks great... but it being February hard to tell how great. We are in Southern California - just curious if anyone else has done anything like this - I was known for my "English Garden" - and I kept the roses - moved them around, filled in with ground cover roses and lots of Flax, lavender and Meyer Ferns. All highly compacted DG - and all watering on drip emitters. About 2/3 of the way in we planted lots of Privet hedges to form a natural courtyard - plan to let them grow at least 8 feet high... giving a year-round green backdrop to the plants in front. The courtyard has lavender, flax, large rocks, agapanthus (already there), etc. Am I completely nuts? I'll send pics when available... It just seems a little stark right now... with nothing blooming... Thanks for any encouragement!

It's not that DG isn't stable. It's that it's sticks to shoes and is messy as Mayflowers says. If it was right next to the door, there'd be a lot of sand bits tracked into the house, and consequently regret placing it there. There is not a plan for me to draw over so I'm sketching on the photo. It's not a solution. It's an exploration. I could take a better look if you provide an actual plan. (Again, it will look straight down on the yard as opposed to viewing it from an angle. All you need to show is house footprint and perimeter wall ... both these things to a measured scale. If you draw and photograph it, please photograph it with the camera looking straight at it, not at an angle.) What you're calling a gazebo I think I'd call a shade structure since it does not include a floor. You need to account for its size and shape when you design the patio. That doesn't mean, however, that it must be an exact match. It's one of those places tradeoffs might happen on account of your tight space situation. If we have a PLAN, we can see what really fits. Also, you might draw the outline of the shade structure next to the plan, to scale, so we can see what needs to be accommodated. If it was me, I would not home in on patio "tile" blocks just yet.

Thank you Verdance! I was a little concerned about the rock filled bathtub thing myself. I'm actually not sure how bad the drainage situation is over there, though. That corner is always damp, but we have never had standing water there or anything like that. Until a few months ago, the pile of rocks was actually mounded up against the fence, covering a pile of dirt and "mulching" a hydrangea that was shoved in the corner, so even if water wanted to drain out onto the neighbor's patio, it couldn't. The pros we have spoken with have touched on drainage ideas, mostly involving an underground drain connecting to the pipe in the trough you see in the third photo, which connects to a catch basin near the front of the house (downhill at least 1.5 feet over a 30 ish foot run). We would like to attach the downspout to that pipe as well, and bury the whole thing so that it's not an eyesore or tripping hazard. Anyway, I hear what you are saying about concrete, but to be honest I don't love the look of it. If money were no object I would be happy to put pavers over both the existing concrete and the dirt area, but the 10-12K that will cost is earmarked for other things this summer. It might be possible in the future, though, which is why I don't want to do anything that would make it more difficult to do pavers in the future. Grrr. Decision making is not my strong suit ;)

Pea gravel rolls around, decomposed granite makes dust and sticks to shoe bottoms. pea gravel is cleaner, both “squish”. if possible, go to the bulk gravel yard, walk on the types of gravel you are interested in, touch it.....I rolled around on different sized river rock for an installation. I wonder why you do not obtain hands on vs internet information?