I like your ideas about removing the overwhelming plantings.

I hate ivy, too. It is a thug plant that is very hard to get rid of. Many states now prohibit the sale of it for landscaping.

Why don't you start the project and see what the space looks like once you've cleared the unwanted plants?

If selling, rip out all the fencing, hedges and other over and under growth. Then focus on getting the remaining grass to make a come-back. Let the next owners decide what else to do. I think repairing the irrigation system would be a plus when it comes time to sell, and it will help your grass look better.

@decoenthusiaste unfortunatley the gophers who recently took out the jasmine feasted on the grass previously and the ground is so uneven one is likely to roll an ankle. In order to make it grass again for sale, it would have to be completely tilled and resod. it is certainly an option, but I’m hesitant as we are currently in the longest drought in the Bay Area’s history. But perhaps replacing the lawn with a more drought tolerant ground cover would work.

IMO gravel for a cahir to sit on is awful you can't move the chair and honestly not a good idea. Do you have a back yard IMO that is where you would have seating. IMo first just rip out everything and the see how it feels you will know if the fence is a must. I think you could have areally cute cottage garden without the gravel at all. IMO you are trying to do too much in a very small space You do not mention where you live so hard to advise plants but I love shady gardens maybe check out mystery gardens they can be really fun I think a nice white picket fence and an arbor could really make that house pop, BTW get thos signs of what ever fence you use .You will need to also clean up the boulevard since that will certainly affect how your home looks

Take it in two stages.

First, remove the old fence, ivy and jasmine. Trim the foundation hedge so that its top is one foot below the window sills, and the back of the hedge is a foot away from the wall (for air circulation). Mow the grass and weeds, clean up the parking strip between sidewalk and street.

Second, step back and take a look at the overall appearance. Put out some patio chairs and watch the kids play for a week or two. You may find that a small area of good sod for kids to play and the majority in ground cover would be a good mix. Pea gravel is a real pain, especially when kicked up by a weed eater to break a window. A better choice would be Mexican beach rocks about the size of a hen's egg. They are very similar to Japanese river rocks in appearance.

I like your plan. we have a rock mulch landscape instead of lawn with some drought tolerant plants and love it. It uses less water, is low care and neat looking. We have a short slump block wall that we put in front of our yard but i don't think you need one.

@Patricia Colwell Consulting thanks for the input. We are in CA just south of San Franisco about 2 blocks from the ocean (sadly no view). We are in climate zone 17 of the Sunset Westwrn Gardens climate map which means we get no frost, and no heat really. While i love the idea of an cottage garden and it would do well in our climate, we are trying to reduce water usage due to the severe drought our state has been in and will likely continue to be in. are there such things as drought tollerant cottage gardens?

yes adding seating may be too much in the space, but the neighbors and I often findourselves sitting on the curbs to supervise children playing. A white picket fence is definitely the route I would go if we do replace the fence.

Thanks, you’ve given me somethings to think about.

@apple_pie_order thanks.

we are planning to move in stages, but i like your suggestion. i could pull some chairs from the backyard for a trial.

Im not sure what the hedges are under the window boxes, but i dont know if they would survive such a drastic cut. They only have greenery on the outside edges. i usually trim the new growth (seen in this photo) back to just above the base of the window boxes where the old growth is (they are alreay cut back so they dont touch the house and they dont grow in that direction except on the top edge, which i trim off).

Yes, the entire parking strip needs to go, except the tree (it is one of the two trees on our block, and a home for hummingbirds). We have a lot of people parking and trampling the space so i was thinking just some river rock and maybe some succulents perhaps.

We have pea gravel in our backyard under our pergola swing and around raised beds and haven't had much issue with weeds, but I’ll look into the rock you suggest. A new house near by recently installed some pretty rock that was larger than pea gravel but smaller than river rock and it looks lovely.

If you want to sit in your front yard, take out the foundation planting. You might want to look behind them, first to see if you have a lot of ugly foundation that you'd want to hide.

I'm constantly reading about all the really lovely, draught-tolerant native California has, so just educate yourself. You could do a low-water, native cottage garden that would be stunning.

You don't want a huge expanse of gravel, it's ugly. Have steppingnstones to a small seating area and low-growing plants elsewhere.

@Sigrid that makes sense. Yes there is a lot of ugly behind the foundation plants: 4-5 foundation vents that are at least a foot off the ground, plus the water main and gas pipes entering the house and water main shut off. I’d love to make the pipes more accesible while still being hidden. Currently one has to crawl into the hedge to access them, and its left a hole in the hedge.

I’ve got a lot of research to do for sure.

If you have little kids to keep safe in the yard, put up a new fence and gate. White pickets will need repainting every few years. Raw wood and painted wood are both likely to get that greenish haze you can see on the old fence. It could be blasted off with a pressure washer if you are lucky and careful.

Check with current local drought restrictions before planting anything. Despite recent storms, restrictions are likely to continue because the drought is far from over. Your window boxes can be planted with blue lobelia, white sweet william or other annuals for a lush look without much watering.

Our yard is a work in progress but rock mulch is not ugly! The Blue flowered plant to the left is one of the many great California sages we’ve grown, Salvia Clevlandii and across from it is a lavender both great low water users that look wonderful in gravel. Further up to the right is a lantana and in the middle back is flowering teucrium cossini with a getting ready to flower germander. If you look to mediteranean and California natives there are so many great plants that planted in a rock landscape are a great replacement for a lawn.

That’s to the left as you come out of the house. From the point of view of the photographer the plants are the other way round. ie the lavender is on the left, and so on.

@mojavemaria i agree. Rock mulch can be very pretty. One issue I've noticed today as I’ve been researching CA native drought tollerant plants is that our yard is Part Shade to Full Shade, thanks to our neighbor’s massive redwood tree, but most of the plants require full sun. We have a mystery succulent that is doing very well in the one sunny corner, which i hope to keep. We also have some Island Alumroot in our backyard that does well in a shady spot, so im confident it could do well in the front too.

I would keep it open with no fence

Or more drought tolerant

I'd lose the fence and overgrown landscaping, and then combine a hard surface like concrete, pavers, or large rock, with drought tolerant plantings.

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wow plants for shade is not something I've had to deal with much but there are a lot of succulents that don't like full sun. Aloes and echevarias come to mind. we have landscape boulders front and back and they absolutely don't care! Sounds like you are thinking about the right things so I‘ll bet it will be great.

Rock mulch isn't the problem, large areas devoid of greenery are. @mojavemaria pic is pretty, because it is full of plants.

As the owner of many tons of gravel, it sucks for a patio. Not stable for the chairs, gets weedy. Hate mine. But it is free of watering and trimming. It does get messy from leaf drop which I find annoying. But I'd remove the 2 hedges and fence first and sit with the new space a few weeks before the next step. It looks oddly closed off now for such a small yard. I live in an area where water needs to be saved as well and I have tried many things. Have not hit on the perfect one. Perhaps pavers for the patio if you must have one in front.

Here is a great chart of SF drought tolerant plants and there is a column of shade plants.

How old are your kids, how wide is the sidewalk, how far is your yard from the street? I personally like the idea of a more spilling drought tolerant garden and can't imagine a fence with that. Do you feel unsafe without a fence for your kids? Is there a planting strip in the sidewalk too that you can carry over with the same plantings from your yard?

Have you taken a good walk around your neighborhood, or a good drive to a town north or south of you and taken inspiration pics of other people's gardens? (That happen to have shade!)

The French and Italian seem to have made great use of chairs and lounge chairs on pea gravel for centuries. It seems sensible to me if you can manage the weed growth.

Also, I know the Bay Area has so many mirco climates. Do you get a lot of fog or moisture? I wonder how that impacts what you would plant. I don't necessarily trust climate zone maps in areas where there are such microclimates.

Do you have the budget to hire a great landscape designer?

@Kendrah thanks for that amazing resource! We are definitely in a micro climate on the Half Moon Bay Coast. we get quite a bit of high level fog but not ground level at our house. But in comparison to much of the peninsula we do usually get some moisture/morning dew.

The kids currently dont use the yard, which is one reason I’d like to open it up more and make it more usable. Either as a place to eat snacks (the neighborhood gang is always hungry) or play games. Instead they play in the driveway, the neighbors yard, or the street (baseball, bikes & scooters).

We have done lots of neighborhood walking (thanks pandemic) and yards are very eclectic, most still have lawns though (most houses are also set further back than ours too, but ours was built before setback standards were set). Our street is about half lawns/artifiartificial turf, and half non-lawn.

We have about a 3 foot wide sidewalk with a parking strip that we need to redo too. However we have a dance school and a community organization at the other end of our street so the parking strip is routinely trampled by people getting in and out of their cars.

I’d love to be able to do much of the work ourselves, but I’ve reached out to the landscape designer who redid our backyard several years ago, to discuss and get an estimate. However our budget for the front yard isnt nearly as big.

@shari13 yes it feels very closed off and we dont use the space. Instead we end up hanging out in the driveway, so that combined with the rotten fence, the hatred of the ivy, and the gophers destroying the jasmine are driving the change.

My mom had a neighbor who would come and bait her gopher holes with Juicy Fruit gum - it really did kill the little suckers. You might try it. They were apparently drawn to the smell and then it literally "gummed up" their innards! They'd die of constipation! I once lived in Pacifica, right on the beach, and it was often socked in with fog. Then I'd drive over the hill to SF and it was sunny!

My "pet" was a young shark that swam around in front of my place for about a month and then disappeared.

Before you do anything, check local building codes for requirements about how much ground needs to be covered by living plants. Pea gravel as mulch is okay for succulents, but it a pain when it starts to get incorporated into the soil. Arborist wood chips, like you get when a tree is removed would be a better ground cover and would be better for the soil and your plants.

@lgteacher thanks, I’ll look into it. To my knowledge there are limits about the amount of non-permeable surfaces allowed but not plant life. (And considering we have neighbors with paved front yards and full AstroTurf I don’t think there is a living plants code, but, I’ll double check). For the plant beds we would likely use traditional mulch not rocks. We were thinking of using rock or possibly decomposed granite for the seating area and pathways only.

Okay there seems to be some confusion based on my initial drawing that we weren’t planning on planting plants or including greenery. I’m not a landscape designer and my drawing was initial just to see if I could fit a patio. I’ve updated it to include a planting concept. The current plant list may not be the best choices as I’m still researching and gathering ideas (I tried to focus on CA native species that will do well with drought and my very shady coastal yard). My plant drawings are not to scale, mearly to help show a concept.

With fencing (blue line) #1
Without fencing (no blue line) #2

Since you may be moving, I would just do the minimum and keep very neutral and basic but enough to attract buyers for resale curb appeal. Some buyers get turned off by any simple thing.

Their tastes maybe and mostly likely are completely different and will tear it all out and start over.

And all your effort, time and money are gone.

Give them a simple blank state to start with.

Well they came and took the rotten fence and dead hedge away. They butchered the hedge in front of the house and cut the drip irrigation main line in the process too. It’s definitely looking worse instead of better right now. 🤦‍♀️ Have to remind myself that this is just step one.
Before and After:

That's a big change. You have a nearly clean slate. What is the hedge plant? Privet? It may or may not resprout from the bare underneath parts, depending on what it is.

Getting the driveway and front sidewalk cleaned by a pro pressure washer company with those rotary scrubbers (watch some amazing youtube videos) could make it look much fresher.

@apple_pie_order we were told the hedge is a Japanese Privet. But I question this since it has never produced flowers or berries, but it is in full shade so maybe that’s why. They weren’t suppose to trim the outward facing side of the hedge. I seriously doubt it will come back. It’s never produced any new growth from that angle. I usually only had to trim the top of the hedge.

Pressure washing is a good idea but we’ll likely wait to do that until after we finalize the landscaping I think.

Only trimming the top of the hedge is why it is now looking leggy. I actually think it hasn't been cut down hard enough. And it probably didn’t produce flowers or berries because of being trimmed. Japanese Privet is a small tree and although it can be kept clipped as a hedge that would prevent blossoming. If you can post a close up we can confirm that id.

Btw it will come back, never fear.

UPDATE: I wanted to thank everyone for their helpful suggestions. Our front yard renovation is almost complete. All we have left to do is pick out some colorful pillows for the chairs and wait for the plants to grow larger over time. We’re really happy with it. This is about the most sun the yard gets so finding native California plants that were shade tolerant and drought tolerant was a challenge. Here’s our plant list:
Allumroot in 2 variations;
Seaside Daisy;
Narrow Leaf Milkweed;
Blue Eyed Grass; and,
Western Sword Fern

The pots and window boxes aren’t natives but contain combos of impaitients, lace ferns, a different variation of allumroot, and daffodils.

It’s much more enjoyable to sit outside and watch the kids play now.

That looks so inviting, nsmith! Please give more updates after the plants fill in and in the Fall.

You have a very nice and cozy house, but as you said, a redesign of the environment will not hurt you, since this environment around your house does not look very good. I would advise you to do composite fencing in order to emphasize the beauty and comfort of your home. You can arrange the space around your house with the help of decorative items that are sold in hardware stores, they will help you refresh the design of your home even more. There are many ideas on how to decorate the exterior of the house, but this matter is already up to you. I hope you come up with some brilliant idea about this and you will succeed. Good luck!