Progress on the Landscape Plan

First, just let me say, I'm not an architect and I'm using my phone to create these mock-ups, so they are pretty loose.

Here is our lot with all its issues. The gray outline is the house, the orange lines are existing fences, and the light gray is the sidewalk and driveway. The dark gray is the street. The green represents existing shrubs; mainly azaleas.

Our half acre lot is highly irregular and the house sits on it at an angle to the street and the back fences. The pool is not aligned with the axis of the house. All those brown dots are mature trees, with the four huge ones being heritage oaks which cannot be removed. There are also at least fourteen other trees to take into consideration.

We'd  like to create a service area for gardening equipment, trash bins, firewood storage, and a vegetable garden. We'd like to have a large rectangle of lawn for croquet. We want to create an azalea garden in the shadiest part of the garden where most of the azaleas already are. We want low maintenance pavers almost everwhere else. We need large shrubs to screen the back fence because it's wrought iron and everyone can see right through it. We also want to add more off-street parking and eliminate all the lawn in the front. And it would be nice to leave some space for a future garage/workshop.

Is that too much to ask?

Here's the plan I've come up with. The terracotta color is brick porches, walkways, and pavers. The green rectangle will be lawn. I've added a fence to separate the public area from the service area. I've tried to create view lines along the pool axis, out the dining room windows through the azalea beds, and through the public gate into the garden. I hope to accent these view lines with a fountain and trellises for wisteria.

I've added a U-shaped driveway to make it easier to get out of the driveway. It's not a busy street but seeing traffic around the curve is sometimes difficult. It looks like a lot of paving, but with all these trees, and all those leaves, and we need an easy-to-clean landscape.

We still have enough space to add a workshop on the right side, and create more garden rooms in the outlying areas. Here's what might happen later.

The white lines represent trellises on which to grow vines. The lawn in front has been replaced with decomposed granite and a rail fence has been added for roses. On the right you see a possible workshop and driveway.

Here's some inspiration:

Rail Fence

Fountain with Trellis Beyond

A girl can dream, can't she?