the pix doesn't tell you much...wellspring, you pretty much understood...to answer your question, i LOVE gardening so i'm not concerned about maintenance. the landscaper will take care of drainage...and terracing. if we do that. he is an engineer/architect/landscape guy (grin) can't really remember all his qualifications. the BIG thing i really don't know is: will i be able to communicate what i want (especially seeing i don't KNOW) AND i don't know if he is a CREATIVE person. saypoint, nothing about appearance of the house is unattractive; yard is just.....BORING. it's a 2 story, grey dutch colonial on 1/3 acre suburban lot. f.y.i. piet oudolf is appearing at the chicago cultural center on sept 27. i have visited the lurie garden (which i suppose you already know he designed for the new millenium park). i buy perennials from northwinds, who supplied oudolf with his plantings for millenium park. nandina, great idea, my husband & i are going to drive thru some of the more up-to-date neighborhoods this week. mad gallica, good point, we have the line of yews going across the foundation (grin) actually, though, i'm beginning to think more & more that i am looking for architectual design & THEN plant selection. so, what do you think....geez, maybe i should postpone the app't for awhile...this is such a big step...wish i had a better idea of what the heck i want.....phyl

Re: suggestion for landscape design software ... Unfortunately, these programs are not a "magic bullet" for creating landscape design. The various softwares are drawing programs that help one's design appear well presented. But they don't actually "do" or "know" design ... and can't, as it has been said, create good landscape design anymore than MS Word can write a good novel for one who is without writing skills. A person would already need landscape design skills in order to create a good design using these programs. My complaint of the lower cost programs in regard to planting has always been that their representations are very cartoonish. Most of the plant "pictures" they use do not look good, or realistic. In addition, there is a learning curve that must be accomplished in order to use the program. I think it's much easier for a novice to design using pencil, paper, tracing paper and basic scale measuring tools, the use of which is intuitive, no learning curve involved. Plain circles drawn for plants will work. The one thing software allows one to do if a person can get to that point is see a 3-D representation of what they've created. It can be a help insofar as understanding relationships between elements and is especially helpful for hardscape. I have explored Realtime Landscaping and think that it makes things look good, but found aspects of it to be troublesome and frustrating to use. For example, if one wants a ramp, one could look for days, but ultimately discover that the version of the program just doesn't do ramps. Creating correct details of the house to use as a backdrop for the landscape (if needed for visualization) can also take some time to figure out and involve frustration, while the planting part is relatively simple. Their library of objects is confusing and mystifying to use. Then, you might be more apt at using these things than I. Most of the programs that are available have demos on Youtube. Explore those. Punch looks promising as a low-end program insofar as ease-of-use is concerned. It might do what you want for not too much money. You might check the review comparison I've linked below. Here is a link that might be useful: Landscape software reviews

I'm in Pensacola, Fl (though I'm not really new anymore!!). We had 36 pallets (yep! ..a lot!) of El Toro installed in the Spring of 2010, and it is/was INCREDIBlY beautiful. But I've had my ups & downs. The ups are that I treated it organically only, so far, by not using any chemicals, but I did fertilize it 3 times over the spring and summer with rabbit food pellets (alfalfa pellets). The alfalfa pellets helped the roots take exceptionally fast, except along the house where there's shade, and under 2 large oak trees, where there's only about 4 hours of sun/day. So, where I had a lot of sun, and had put down alfalfa, it grew TOO well!! I was mowing twice per week, and (are you sitting down?) I was doing all this all summer long with a Fiskars Reel mower, the new orange one that came out that throws the grass forward, with NO catcher!!) Let's just say I was always mowing!! Every day, I would mow for about 1-2 hours, and use that as my exercise. After the large $$$ investment in the grass, I didn't see fit to buy a riding mower....just yet anyway. Actually, I LOVE the Fiskars mower, but I have almost an acre, and if the grass would grow more slowly, I think I'd be ok with it. So, although it greened up and took root, and was LUSH and THICK and quite possibly the prettiest grass in all of Pensacola, the down-side is that I don't think I can possibly repeat all that work again this coming summer. And the 1 other main problem I had was my own fault. On July 1st, with family/friends coming over for the July 4th weekend, I decided to cut the grass short so I wouldn't have to mow for the whole upcoming week. MAJOR MISTAKE!! I cut the 3" grass down to about 1". It looked FANTASTIC for the next week...and then, boom! It all turned brown! It took about 3 weeks for all of it to come back green again, but meanwhile, the weeds crept in, especially in the shaded areas under my 2 oak trees in the front yard. The side yards and back are in full sun, and though some weeds did get in, there aren't too many that I probably couldn't go in and hand-pull. But the weeds in the shaded area in the front yard (for all my inquisitive neighbors to gawk at) are getting worse throughout the winter and have pretty much taken over the zoysia. My question would be, when and what should I do, for either/or a pre-emergent, and/or post-emergent, even though I hate using chemicals. The alfalfa pellets were so amazing and even my roses and flowers on side beds were phenomenal, once I used alfalfa. I do have very sandy soil, and have been warned that if I ever go to using chemicals, I will kill off the GOOD nematodes, and will end up helping the BAD nematodes, and once I have the bad nematodes, this grass is pretty much a permanent bye-bye!! (Another neighbor about 10 yrs ago lost all his zoysia to bad nematodes) The only other problem I've had over the last 6 months or so, are mole hills and tunnels, and I've heard that I can use dishwashing soap in the water-sprayer to get rid of the bugs that attract the moles in the first place. I still have a bunch of mole hills/tunnels in the front yard, where there's shade and weeds. I've not really had any mole tunnels in the super sunny areas. So my questions are: 1. should I use chemicals for the weeds, and if so, what and when? 2. When should I scalp the grass this spring? And how short should I scalp it? 3. Should I keep using alfalfa, and when, and what else would help as far as fertilizer? 4. Any other thoughts?

Wow, much to think about. The pictures you sent looked a lot better than grass on the slop with a landscaped bed. This approach would really soften up my house much better. Low maintenance is a high priority for me. So I think trying to get away from shrubs is a good plan. I'm just not familiar with plantings at all. I'm still a bit hung up on figuring out what the height of the step down off the porch should be. Now that I understand your yellow/blue lines, it appears from your sketch the dirt line would be every bit of a 24" dropoff with ground cover around 18". This also looks similar to the photos you sent. I was worried this would be too much but assuming you agree with those dimensions, I'm going with it. The picture below gives a bigger picture. Note the patio section we've been discussing is on the right, it's way off to the side of the house (actually the carriage house/inlawsuite that was my grandmother's "retirement home" for 10 years until she passed away. (Don't be confused by the identical section in the middle labeled as Future: Phase 2, I was going to try out this concept on the side of the house with lower grade before attempting it in the middle section.) Here's an image looking out with the red circle on the left showing the area we're discussing. The panorama distorts the middle of the house making it appear as the center of the breeezeway. Because this is off to the side of the carriage house, it's really removed so I wasn't overly concerned about plantings, however, low maintenance is much better. Could you tell me what the purple and pink ground cover are. I'm not the most creative and would like to try to just copy what's in the photo if it works in 7b.