Hi everyone! Sorry for the confusion. The first picture at the top of the thread is take from the corner of the lot. The main street (Foreside Road) is South, parallel to the garage and the face of the house with the front door. Since we're on the corner, there's also a side street (Hallmark Road) exactly perpendicular to Foreside Rd, and parallel to the part of the house with the patio doors. Right now, our mailbox is at the foot of the driveway on Hallmark Road, as you can see in the photo looking up the line of fir trees towards the corner of Hallmark and Foreside. Our GOAL is to create a front path and move the mailbox up to the main street, Foreside Road, where it belongs. Sorry about that confusion! laag, I get what you're saying about designing from the outside in. Just not sure it's easy for me to do that! I am feeling really rather overwhelmed by all this. Now even lacking a starting point, which is discouraging. laag, your last post resonated with me a lot. My dad and brothers are architects and I'm sure they would enjoy this discussion, even it's somewhat over my more pragmatic head! But I do see those conflicts you've identified as needing resolution before any more plant choices or bed shapes are decided on. I welcome any ideas you guys have, becuause it feels a little beyond me right now! isabella, the family is always going to use the side door (on the south side next to the garage) and from the side street -Hallmarks Rd- it's the only door you see and quite obviously a main entrance. We have a nice new fir door for it, and are rebuilding a more substantial porch there, for utilitarian reasons and because we don't like that teeny third gable currently over the door. I am OK with the fact that this door will feel prominent from the sought elevation, but what I really want to do is to also emphasize the actual Front Door (in the middle of the west elevation)!!! woodyoak, thanks for your comments. As mentioned in the first post, the main goal here is to emphasize the actual Front Door (that is lost now). I've planned to add steps and a path up to the main road, and relocate the mailbox up there where it belongs. That white door on the side of the garage is simply a garage door (doesn't go inside) and will be painted a similar color to the new painted brick, so that it stands out as little as possible. To the right of that garage door is the main family-use door (under the weird little gable overhand which will go away and a proper small porch added there.) Yesterday some nice people from Craigslist came and took away the old porch and metal railing outside the bedroom patio doors. I am hoping that will help me visualize better! Also: the awning is NOT going to stay. So the deck is gone, and that looks good... but it does look weird to have the patio doors just there with nothing in the landscape to give them a reason. I understand the visual and phychological reasons for having a small railing-ed deck there, but I hesitate because #1- I doubt we'd use it for sitting on very much so dont' want to spend a bunch of cash on it that could go into the deck we WILL use out back, #2- If it were railinged, I'd want to make sure there was a gate, because this door has been invaluable for moving large furniture into the house, and at other times its been nice to have it as a means of ingress. What about just a rough granite step and nothing else? Would that just be too weird, patio doors opening into a bed of shrubs? Argh.

Thanks again for all the great responses!! Perhaps I should've mentioned that we just bought the house 3 years ago and we're not planning on selling for a very long time. It may be small, but we're fixing it up to enjoy it ourselves and while we don't have kids yet we can certainly make it work with the size. Let me start by posting the picture that someone on the Smaller Homes Forum mocked up for me as this is very similar to what we're thinking as far as the house itself (not the landscaping so much). And also a close up of the front door (the current screen door will be repalced with a full/nearly full glass door eventually, it's a special size) You know what KarinL, I hadn't even really thought about the idea of raised boxes against the foundation. That is a very interesting prospect that I'll have to mull over a while. To be honest we don't use the porch very much, or I should say, as much as we should. But there's really not much to look at out there...right now anyway ;) hlechat - Thanks for the wonderful comments and search suggestions. I'll definitely take a peek at them! I love a thick dark green lawn as much as the next person but I don't use chemicals and I haven't taken the time to really investigate how to acheive that look without chemicals. To be honest, my goal is to reduce the amount of grass to mow, not only because it's a pain in the neck and time consuming, but I'm also trying to reduce the amount of gas we use (I know in the grand scheme of things its not really going to matter, but I like to think it helps just a litte bit). Much like drtygrl posted, that's one thing designshare got right. I'm really thinking my best course of action is to plant the whole front yard, at least the part in front of the house. I'm not going to turn the entire sideyard into a garden, I think I'll leave some grass there to blend into the neightbor's yard. Regarding the Japanese Maple, I think that will be the replacement tree type that I use on the right side of the house for when we remove the norway maple. It'll provide nice dappled to full shade from the late afternoon sun and I can get a larger one for that side then I could if I planted it on the left where I need something smaller. Plus I think it'll add some nice color to that side of the house. I never did get around to getting a better picture of the house this weekend, I'll try to get it posted today. But here's the site plan I sketched up. There is a slight scale to it, it was done on grap paper where 1 square equaled 2" but through copying and scanning the squares were lost, sorry!

Frankie, your concerns and approach probably most closely mirror the internal debate I went through before redesigning the plantings. I did end up adding several fruit trees to the right side of the driveway, removing that entire lawn area, and combined these with artichokes, roses and lavenders mixed with annuals and succulents to replace the lawn area, and a fence with grape vines along the side property line. If I had my druthers, I probably would have added some more formal parterres of boxwood or clipped/hedged English Lavender as well, but the owner wasn't really concerned about it not fitting in. You are absolutely correct that the front yard area has the most sun, although the raised veggie beds in the back garden will eventually expand into the adjacent lawn area, or at least I've suggested this. The owners also intend to demolish the large existing raised deck and do a smaller deck landing and stairs down to the garden below, not really liking the effect of being above the garden and exposed to the neighbors view as it is now. Chickens are intended to be confined to the backyard only, and we have had some initial problems with them eating new plants. I think they are getting back for having been confined in that small coop for the past month! Previously they were more selective about the damage they caused, and I guess I wasn't cautious enough about some of the new selections. I've asked the owners to keep them confined to one area in the back garden for at least the first 6 weeks, to give the new plantings time to get some size and better resist their pecking at them. The front lawn may eventually be converted to a lower water use no-mow lawn/meadow, as it is mostly weedy grass species and dandelions at present, and while we did take out a fair amount of overgrown and straggly former hedges that had become small trees in the back garden near the fountain, removing or relocating trees in front were not in play. I agree with KarenL that that flowering cherry isn't the best placed tree, nor well shaped, but I worked with it and the dogwoods as a given. The Coast Live Oaks will be significantly thinned come fall, which will make them seem less oppressively massive, and also benefit the understory plantings below. Painting fences isn't done much here, unless it is more the picket fence style, and personally the contrast between raw redwood aged to gray and the house doesn't bother me, I see it as the norm around here. My take on Victorian style gardens taken into the present is to continue the ecclectic planting choices common to the era, but also try and give a bit more continuity to the design. If there hadn't already been so much mature plantings that demand summer irrigation to thrive, I would have steered this garden towards more drought tolerant plants and California natives. It wouldn't have worked well with so many Hydrangeas, Japanese Maples, Flowering Dogwoods all accustomed to spray irrigation, so I only converted the hell strip to drip irrigation, and everything else was left as conventional spray irrigation. I am hoping that at some point there will be a phase two with this front garden, switching out the lawn, adding a colorful perennial flower/shrub border across the lawn at the street, perhaps a new gate at the front walk, planting up the hellstrip, etc. I don't think I'll add any photos for this garden until it has filled in a bit. Not much charm in seeing lots of mulch and tiny plants, but it will be an explosion of color in another 6 weeks or so. Also not a pretty sight to see how I hacked back transplanted roses and hydrangeas to bare stubs after moving them around, and was also very rough with my moving/dividing perennials such as Alstroemeria, Achillea, Tulbaghia, Anemone japonica, etc. Fortunately as the client already knows the results I can get even when things first planted don't look "prime", I didn't have to be worried that the garden looked full of cut back bare stems. Even 5 foot tall artichokes were cut back to the roots after moving them, but I'm confident they will look great again in just a month or so. One of the pleasures of working in such a balmy coastal climate, Alameda has spring-like weather without heat waves nearly all summer long. The photo link is of one of the perennials I've added throughout the front planting beds for a blast of purples and blues next spring, Florist Cineraria which self sows like a weed here, and stays in bloom for 4 to 5 months in winter through late spring, and is great foliage filler when not blooming. Here is a link that might be useful: Perennial color for shade

Pam - I see you saw my comments on the rudbecka Rustic not-really-dwarf mix on the other thread. For folks who missed that, the 1/8 oz pack at Swallowtail (in their annual seeds section) contains about 3000-4000 seeds so that actually beats the prices on most of what they offer in their bulk section. The Swallowtail bulk section is always worth checking, but sometimes they also have wickedly huge seed packets at low prices in their regular section. Some of my faves there include: California poppies at 4500 seeds for $2.49 - $2.95 depending on type. Strawflowers, 5000 seeds for $2.49 Cosmos, 1300 seeds for $1.95 Foxgloves Excelsior hybrids at 20,000 seeds (yes, no typo) for $2.95 but currently out of stock. (But you could get 2500 seeds from ValueSeed.com for $0.99 if you need a bunch right now.) They've got some other bargains in there too but those are my favorites. Their xeranthemum and paper daisies have bargain packs but I wasn't impressed with the flowers or plants - especially when compared to their tall strawflower mix. That tall strawflower mix is a real winner. I didn't know they were as hardy as they were - my plants were green and flowering into the beginning of December here. In your area you might still have them blooming at Christmas. Another of my favorites is Helenium Autumanale - especially after seeing it as Bluestone's Perennial's cover flower in last year's catalog. I bought a pack from the bulk section at Swallowtail - 1000 seeds for just under $10. I got those in late May last year. The germinated fast (and with a very high germination rate), transplanted well, many bloomed the first year and I got a nice seed farm level of seed out of those. Helenium flowers are gorgeous with a lot of variety. They blow in the breeze in a super pretty way. I don't think it's possible to take a bad photo of them. I ended up hositing a photo group on Flickr just for helenium flowers because they are so beautiful. They are even super easy and fun to seed save from - seeds pop right off without fuss. AND they are long lived and perennial to zone 3. Oh, and they propagate easily by division so that once you have a favorite color you can divide it and make a garden full of clones if you like. I also think that they are likely to be a hot item for gardenweb seed and plant trading. Unless everyone who reads this ends up growing their own. :) Lynda Here is a link that might be useful: Slideshow from Flickr Helenium group