Looks like new sod. You might want to visit Wal Mart because they are slashing prices on perennials. I'd like to see some dogwoods or redbuds on the hill with azaleas and some bulbs in the fall, Costco is the best place. When you plant use compost or manure to enrich the clay and look for summer flowering perennials that are evergreen for the hill and since you already have the steps make a sitting area at the top of the hill. No reason to raise the bed its just more work and money for the same effect.

I don't want to do anything to the hill, the hill has 15 butterfly bushes brand new planted, I am talking about the back part of the house. I just showed the hill to show the color/wood of the steps.

In my opinion the shape of the lawn is to be determined before the shape of the beds. If you cut out beds in the lawn they will look just like that......cut out beds.
Most foundation beds are too narrow and straight to begin with. With an informal look, the lawn should 'flow'.

Is there a reason you need all that lawn?

There may be--it's just that as I'm trying to design a decent bed, for myself, I find eight feet deep too small.

But maybe I just like big plants!

A couple of questions
1)Were you planning to raise the bed against the house?

2)Does the bed wrap around the corner (through the fence) or just extend along the fence?

3) are you open to expanding the beds' depth?

If your answer to #1 is yes-I'd rethink that. Pilling earth up on a foundation is an invitation to water and insects.

If your answer to #2 is no, it doesn't wrap the corner-I would suggest that it should. It will be almost impossible to keep that edge neat. Why not leave it as far along the fence and then curve it (large wide turn)to the side yard. this will give you a nice spot for a smaller ornamental tree.
If your answer to #3 is yes I'm open to making the bed deeper- good idea! you could also create a nice curve for a more relaxed look.

couple of questions
1)Were you planning to raise the bed against the house?
Yes, is that a bad thing? It's brick.

2)Does the bed wrap around the corner (through the fence) or just extend along the fence? It used to wrap around the corner, and maybe one day it wil again but the sun hits that side of the house awful and killed the majority of the bushes that used to be against it, so I had them rip those out and sod it. I could eventually put another bed back on the side, but I think that might be to much for me to handle right now and plus I just paid to sod it.

3) are you open to expanding the beds' depth?

Do I have to? lol. I'm really new to this and really don't want big gigantic empty beds for my daughter to crawl in and get gross, I don't want to bite off more then I can chew. I could always make them deeper later couldn't I? I guess it would depend on how I built the beds. Wood would be okay. I was thinking of using regular old wood with a protective stain so there arn't any chemicals in it, I want to plant some herbs.

If your answer to #1 is yes-I'd rethink that. Pilling earth up on a foundation is an invitation to water and insects.

Oh, dang! :( good point, i had not thought of it. Maybe I could build the bed over here:

{{gwi:39535}}

Righto--try to think, what is your purpose in having a long narrow straight planting up against your wall on the rear of the house?

What other purposes might you want from plantings in the back yard?

oh well I think it would look so pretty up against the house, and then I could see the flowers out of all the windows there! I would love to see stuff up against out bedroom window. I wanted it raised to keep my daughter from crawling in.

Most of the time, things you could grow in those beds would be best viewed from out in the yard or only if you walk up to the window and look down and out.

To have something grow tall enough to be "up against" the window where you can see it, you'd usually be talking about shrubs 4-5 feet tall, which would need a deeper bed to accomodate their bulk. However, some alternatives might be certain limbed-up shrubs with narrower forms and some kinds of shrubs that would take to a trellis, so don't have as much round bulk (some climbing roses, for example, and flowering vines) . But, in general you're talking something bigger than would fit well against the house there. Because usually you are not going to plant these larger items one foot from the wall, I agree that this is not as much of a deal with brick as with wood siding, but with a wall as backdrop, typically you are having the first 2-3 feet out from the house wall as "dead space" for maintenance and air circulation and proper growth of the plant.

I wouldn't make true "raised beds" meaning a foor of more of soil up against the house and corraled by some kind of occlusive barrier. But, if the beds were deeper, you could mound them a bit in the center and slope away on both sides.

Have you identified how much sun, shade etc those strips get? That will help you determine goals for plant performance (don't rely on roses if deep shade, for example); if shade, would you plant a big azalea there so you could see it bloom for a week or 2 and have to prune it bback to keep from covering your window with green the rest of the year. Just points to ponder.

Not against trying to outfox the crawling daughter, but since the crawling stage is so short,and replaced by equally interesting other stages (climbing into the garden), you might not want to construct major permanent or semi-permanent garden features around that stage of life unless they also serve other later purposes well.

But I think the biggest drawback is having too much soil packed against your house. Actually, it might be feasible to have constructed one or more short planter-type boxes in that way, but not the whole length of the wall , I would think

Hi Mediadiva, its mud again,

you say; "I don't want to bite off more then I can chew. I could always make them deeper later couldn't I?"

I'd argue that sure, yes, absolutely you could do it later but if you do you'll have to-1)remove grass with roots! no easy task. 2) relocate plants with root! harder still.

Remember plants do not go "up against the house" as Frankie points out. I wouldn't plant anything closer than 3' from the foundation. The suggestion about mounding the earth up in the middle and sloping on both sides could also lead to water in the basement - the bed should be a little higher in the back and slope away from the house.

designing & planting a garden doesn't have to happen all at once. It's okay to have the bed a bit empty and fill as you go. BTW you can plant your herbs anywhere in the garden if you have the sun for it. That space in the back of the house? How much sun does it receive and when?

Beds right next to the house are a pain in the behind to design, plant, and maintain and I think they are only worth it in the front yard where some issue of appearance makes it important to the homeowner to have foundation plantings. I see no reason at all to torment yourself with that in the back yard, given how much other space you have to grow whatever you like.

I think if this were my yard I would extent the sod, or maybe put pavers, right along the house, and use the rest of the yard to plant flowers. The hillside seems like a natural place for flowers to me - any reason why you don't want to just plant in the area you have there?

And regarding the issue of the child, I totally agree with Frankie. Every phase is so short! We made the mistake of building a backyard playhouse for ours when they were around 5 and they had outgrown it before we finished it, and then it took us another 5 to get around to removing it. What I did discover with my kids, since we always had construction materials around and they were playing in an unfinished playhouse (sigh) is that they can be taught what they can and can't do, although supervised outdoor time is always best, both to reinforce those constraints and for other reasons of course.

Moment of nostalgia: Because I was an avid gardener when my youngest was very small, I taught him to ask before touching any plant. He was barely three and would wander around outside saying "is dis a Euphorbia?" because he knew that if it was he shouldn't touch it.

KarinL

I don't know KarinL, grass right up to a foundation leaves the house just floating in space. The lawn (and house) would be more beautifully IMHO with soft edge gardens surrounding it.

As to the hillside, diva wants it as is for now, maybe when she has more experience she'll take that on. Gardening on a slope presents a whole new and even larger can o' worms!

Oh! I almost forgot my rant about the wrap around corner (through the fence). You could wait but again established grass ARG (scan this site too see how many posts are about removing grass). What did you have planted there in that hot sunny spot?

You could try your hand at espalier, that way the plants are literally "up against the house", and could frame the window.

I think people are always scared to make larger beds and tend to keep them to small. when you look at a house where you like the landscape (at least for me) it has large wide beds with no straight lines. It may seem drastic but it always seem to work out for the best imo

mediadiva, since I expect that making all new beds new places can be difficult to contemplate, I did mention the option of any kind of small plantings that fit in the 4 foot space, and "flat" plantings like trellises or, as noted prairiegirl, espaliered shrubs (take more time to accomplish or are expensive if purchased as mature specimens).

One place to find photos and design suggestions is to search under topics about gardening in small space, narrow space, and on/against walls. These are most often for spaces in which there are no other options, but the principles are the same.

So, it may be that you just need to dig in the dirt a bit and use your new beds to experiment with what grows well there.