With your schemes, weeds will still come up. Landscape fabric is not tough enough. Search out good advice about how to prevent this or you will be fighting weeds weekly of not daily.

Spray the weeds. RM43 total vegetation control is great; it will kill the weeds and prevents new ones. I have horses and a sand/stone dust riding arena 75x145 and this is the first year I’ve been declared the winner of the weed war. It’s a huge saver of time and back pain.

ShadyWillowFarm and yvonnecmartin, thanks for the advice. It was a tremendous amount of work to pull up all of those heavy rocks so I would like to use the best weed prevention options... I had planned to use Round up.

I am confused what was the point of the first pic with the lime green door? BTW that is one of my favorite MCM landscaping ideas.

Patricia Colwell Consulting, you have good taste!

If we followed the deign for the the 1st conceptual picture, we would just buy some huge planter boxes and skip planting inside of the ground and just put our large rocks around the planter boxes (as seen in the photo).

If you go with a herbicide, use one that will prevent weeds for at least three months. The RM43 says 12 months, but this is the first year I’ve used it. It’s lasted a bit over 2 months so far.

@Yardvaark, would you be willing to share design suggestions with me?

With these pictures, I can't get oriented or make out the front of a house. Not sure what is theoretical, inspirational, or actual. What seems probably actual is pieces of scenes, not complete scenes. The bottom line is I don't know what I'm looking at.

Yardvaark, unfortunately, my home has 2 front yards and the main entry straight on view is blocked off by the carport. To help you understand my lot, I had a property boundary survey completed. Please see below and let me know if this helps clarifies things. Also, I highlighted the area of discussion in yellow.

It doesn't matter that the carport blocks off the main entry. We're just trying to get oriented so need to see the big picture and how things connect. If you show a thousand close-ups, without first "explaining" the overall scheme, we may still never understand what is where. Based on the plan you submitted, I'm suggesting 3 places to stand for taking pictures. It's very possible that one set of pictures will not capture enough to tell the whole story, and that other sets of pictures will be needed to supplement it. But the pictures must be taken in some orderly fashion in order to be understood.

My picture-taking symbol here is a dot with 3 arrows. One would stand where the dot is and point the camera in the arrow directions, capturing slightly overlapping pictures. (The camera CANNOT change locations between pictures of a set.) If your camera has a panoramic function, instead of overlapping pictures, take a single, wide, panoramic photo, as that will minimize the handling and uploading. Mainly, I, we, need to see WIDTH. The house itself and the scenery at each side/end should be the backdrop, and there should be at least a car's length of landscape space in front of the house. I'm showing 3 different camera positions because your house seems complex, and that we couldn't capture everything needed from one camera position.

Getting these pictures does not preclude needing more pictures later in order to understand the house and yard. But we have to start somewhere and this seems like the best possibility.

@Yardvaark thanks for trying to help me understand the type of pictures needed to fully conceptualize my project. Can you please clarify where you'd like me to stand to take the pictures? I'm not sure if you meant to attach a picture or something. Thanks.

Oops! I did mean to attach a picture!

I can't guaranty that we'll need all this, but we have to start somewhere and the broadest overview, shown square from the front, is usually the best place for developing an understanding of what's there. Since your house seems to be in distinct sections, we have to take more than one scene.

Yardvaark, thanks for the attachment. I'll send the pictures that you requested shortly... but they will be of the back of my house... My house it weird. By City code, it has 2 front yards (and two 20ft set backs) and the main entrance is not on the same street as the address. The entrance to my house is the yellow portion that I highlighted, near the (future) garage/ (current) carport). Not ideal, I know.

Would you be so kind to provide your guidance for the best location for the portion of the house the house that is highlighted? That is the space that I consider the front yard.

Lets try something like this then.

Pictures from view 1:

Pictures from view 2:

Pictures from view 3:

@Yardvaark please see the pictures above and excuse my delayed response.... I had a hard time finding the best time to take the pictures without a ton of contractor trucks, trash, or packages-- that didn't conflict with the sunrise or sunset...

Any help that you would be kind enough to offer me would be greatly appreciated and any extra pictures that you need would be my pleasure to take!

You've definitely got your hands full!

Is it areas 2 and 3 that you are trying to focus on for foundation planting? Do you have specific goals that you're trying to achieve?

Sharing the pans in case anyone wants to see the composite and have a go at it.

In area 3 are those rocks removed from the bed and sitting on the walk?

Yardvaark, yes it is areas 2 and 3 that I'm trying to figure out. The rocks were removed from both of those areas and I plan to put them back there unless that's bad idea.... which is why this picture originally peaked my interest.

I realize this might not be the direction you want to go. If it doesn't work for you maybe one of the other people who make pictures would have a go at it.

(BTW, after you got us oriented with the plan and the picture set as taken from the street, the first pictures you posted now make sense.)

need some evergreens maybe blue carpet juniper

Thanks, Yardvaark! Your ideas are beautiful and I sincerely apologize for my poor response.

Since I painted the house grey, I will likely implement but will plant yellow flowers to accent. Thank you!!!