You need to contact a local landscape designer. Ask for recommendations from nurseries in your area...NOT big box stores. Do your research on line. Look at portfolios of plans they have drawn up and executed for others. Then....ask for the one that you choose to come to your home for a consultation. A walk through. You will be charged by the hour for them to walk with you through your yard. Be prepared with a list of your NEEDS and wants (in that order.). Listen. Take notes. Ask questions about plant materials, etc. They will offer you a plan that you can implement on your own over time. Or they will offer you their expertise in implementing it for you. If you are smart and handy, you can glean many ideas just from your discussion and create your own plan. Implement it over time as your budget allows. This is what I did several years ago after many ($$$) failures. I slowly and deliberately staged my own renovation of our yard. Who would have thought that we would end up with three, connected, patios on three different levels in our yard? Three different sizes for different purposes...all flowing together? The designer saw it as the best option for our sloped yard. Brilliant! Best money we invested! Good luck!

Start by writing down your budget. Then check with city hall about slopes and hillside requirements. You may need permits for the patio and fences. A professional landscape plan can be implemented in stages or in one fell swoop.

Thank you for sharing your steps and some photos, @groveraxle! That really helps!

@apple_pie_order and ptreckel: That's def gonna be my fall back options. I was hoping to get some advice on here, maybe some ideas/photos/recommendations and if all fails, I'm just gonna have to get real, in-person help!

Dori, start with your own landscape ideabook, if you haven't made one already. Then do a concept plan--just a big rectangle with your existing trees marked on it and sketch ideas for deck, patio, planters. Walk around your yard with your sketch in hand and imagine using each area. Sit in your yard and contemplate on what you'd like to see. It will come, but it may take some time. Don't be in too much of a hurry.

Talk to some landscape designers and ask to see their portfolios. I’ve looked at a lot of landscape photos online and most of them are overdone, loaded with too-wavy lines, unnecessarily complicated shapes, fire pits and fountains that no one uses, redundant “features” and stepping stone paths to nowhere. A good pro design will address your family’s needs in the simplest way possible, IMO, taking into consideration the amount of time you want to spend maintaining it.

Making a list of your needs and wants and a sketch of your yard as suggested above is the first step. You can do it yourself if there are no grade change or drainage issues, or paver installations that you can’t manage or aren’t willing to learn how to do correctly, but it’s hard physical work and there’s a lot to learn first. Planting and mulching is moderately hard work but doable with some advice on plant selection from a good nursery or the forums. Books from the library or online advice on proper planting methods are important for success. Having a lawn seeded or sodded is not that expensive in my area. Lighting is a job for pros.

Here is an outdoor living area with a patio for sitting/dining, grill, lawn, simple flower beds, and not-yet-mature plantings for privacy in the background. It provides a walk from driveway to house. Small tree for shade. Retaining wall provides an interesting grade change. Out of view is a bird bath for bird watching, and additional small sun and shade gardens. No squiggly lines, extraneous rocks and gravel, squirting fountains, monuments to stone-look blocks, or kitsch. Simple. Professionally designed. Last summer this area was a construction site with a new septic system being installed until the patio, sod, and new driveway and were installed around October.

There is enough space here to satisfy an urge to garden but not so much that it creates a burdensome maintenance problem. Beds are kept mulched for weed control and moisture retention. You could easily do something like this in your yard even if you completed the project over time. Some of the garden accoutrements here have been collected over a 25 year period. Some of the gray pots on the ground are 3 or 6 dollar plastic pots from walmart painted with rustoleum camo color spray paint that blends in with the concrete and stone. They were lime green before. Good luck and try to enjoy the process.

Groveraxles’s landscape illustrates the selection of plants and hardscape suitable to the zone and local climate. I’m assuming a desert/dry climate, so no lawn, appropriate plants that tolerate the conditions.

Here’s a link to a designer’s client questionnaire to give you some things to think about. It’s a good way to define your goals, even if you have to give some of them up later due to cost or practicality. This designer also has a yard that looks similar to yours that is nicely done over, on her website. No connection to her, lol.

http://www.carlingardens.com/process/Client%20questionnaire.pdf

Great lawns can be made by just mowing your weeds. If you have short greenery growing and less-than-ideal conditions for grass, it's the best approach.

The link from Carlin Gardens that Saypoint posted it a great one to get you thinking about wishes and needs. I would also think about number of guests you often host, so for instance if you have a large extended family or groups of friends that often come by for meals or other gatherings, do you need to have a covered or uncovered place to seat and feed them all out-of-doors?

If you will be doing the actual work of building the garden and yard or parts of it, remember that utilities and hardscape have to come first, then large plants that take longer to mature such as trees, and then finally smaller plants and finishing touches.

thank you everyone for you advice.. super helpful. I do think i need to get down to setting a budget. I am a pretty visual person so I have an extensive gallery of ideas from pinterest for my backyard ( https://www.pinterest.com/idori/back-a-yard/). The problem is translating those ideas unto my own backyard and seeing what it might look like. Maybe that's where a professional designer who can draw it up for me might make sense!

Last night, i played around with an online software that gives you a free trial and came up with something like this:

I still feel like I would love to see what it might look like with a deck so I'll play around with that as well?

Anyone know good software where i can actually play around with the real pictures that I have of my house?

Here is a recent article:[https://www.houzz.com/magazine/10-questions-to-ask-a-landscape-designer-stsetivw-vs~78310749[(https://www.houzz.com/magazine/10-questions-to-ask-a-landscape-designer-stsetivw-vs~78310749)

1) Decide what you want the space TO DO. What function do you want the space to serve.

2) Then build an ideabook of spaces you like the feel of.

As we also just completed a full back yard renovation it is good advice ^^^ interview local pros, get an idea of budget from them for some ideas you are considering. You may be surprised how much hardscaping costs so once you ‘gulp’ and either bite the bullet or wait....it will be easy and fall into place quickly as your zone/site will determine species that will thrive or fail. And your budget will determine how far you take hardscaping. Good luck!

And with your backyard slope issues this will not be a DIY hardscaping job unless you plan for hours and hours of back breaking work. Our project is almost complete - 500 sf of hardscaping was almost 700 man hours from seasoned pros.

I like the idea of a deck floating around the trees in the back of the yard with a lawn in between, providing zoning allows it. It would draw people out of the house and across the lawn, so makes the whole are more usable.

https://goo.gl/images/VLneJV