Landscaping Design Ideas

So I can't show you our plans as yet because they are still in progress. But I can go through some of the ideas that are included.

Front Yard.

Our street is quite busy with additional parked cars at each house and I didn't want to add to the overflow. Besides our main driveway I had a idea to add a parking area at the opposite side to the driveway to allow parking for guests or in some years our kids cars to be parked neatly off the street.
Our block is a rectangle but the front boundary is angled rather than squared. This leaves extra room on the opposite side to the driveway for this space.

The main driveway is to be double width without the usual angling from 2 'lanes' down to 1 'lane' at the crossover. I know it's a first world problem but it bothers me having to negotiate out of the garage around the curve in the driveway keeping clear of the letterbox whilst avoiding driving over the grass or nature strip. Anyway, first world problem I know, but I want a double width driveway. I also like the squared look of a straight driveway.

We didn't have any other specifics about our landscaping except that I want to use the fall on the land to our landscaping advantage rather than hide it. I like the idea of levels or terracing as part of the landscaping.

So far the design hasn't quite hit the mark yet but I'm confident that we will get there.

Rear Yard.

We had quite a lot of ideas for our backyard starting with wanting a pool. We decided on early on that a pool should be part of our new house. Our house layout also included a 3 stacking door on the back wall of the Living Room ready to walk out into an extended alfresco area, so an extended alfresco including an outdoor kitchen. We both had the idea of including a vegie patch somehow into our backyard then we also wanted a services area for a clothesline, bins etc. Again as requested with the front yard we wanted to use the fall of the land to our landscaping advantage. So far the designer had done a very well with the backyard with only a few little changes requested.

It's looking like we will have the alfresco and outdoor kitchen integrated nicely into the existing alfresco. The rear of the will be the pool area with a 7.5m x 3.5-4m pool. Leading out from the laundry we have about 3.5-4m width so this was to logical space for the services area and our vegie patch will also be locate here too. behind the garage rear door will be concreted area around 4 meters where we can store bins, have a clothes line and generally have a flat tidy easy use area. Moving toward the back there will be 3-4 1x1m raised vegie gardens, tomato or creeper frames and best of all along the raised fence garden bed we will have 3 espalier fruit trees. Our kids are both very excited about the idea of having a vegie patch in our new home as are we. Our Air-Cond, hot water and pool equipment will also be located here too.

The only other space is the right rear corner of our block which is also the highest point of our land too. We wanted to keep this raised higher but also allow for kids play space. We think this has worked out quite well with an excavation to level a large area but keep the very corner space a raised 'platform' for sitting and chatting in the open air.

Around all of these area will be various garden beds for planting out with shrubs and more. If it all works out as designed we will have a lovely back yard for dining, entertaining, play, lifestyle and relaxation. So excited for the part of our new house to be underway or better yet, finished. :-)

Photos and images to come once we have more details.