I forgot to add we are removing the door behind the lilac tree!

I think that a professional landscape/ hardscape plan would be the best place to start. Removing the pavers, creating a planting area by the foundation, adding a railing to the stairs, removing the tree in front of the ” door”, and removing extraneous items in view would be great changes. When I hear the word ” deck” I envision the back of the house.

I cannot see the stairs clearly so perhaps they could be concrete?

The concrete planter around your tree is an interesting (and assumedly original?) feature, but nothing else in your landscape “talks” to it so to speak. With midcentury homes I think ‘poured-in-place’ concrete always looks good— it’s not that different from your paver idea, just at a more appropriate scale & function. Here’s a really bad rendering done with a fat thumb on my phone, but the gist would be to have larger rectangular concrete sections (could be gravel or grass in between) that abut your concrete planter, and having those surrounded by some nice native grasses with a another planted section in the middle, and then echo those same plants in your raised concrete planter around tree). Neat house!

@P.D. Schlitz. Thank you so much for your suggestions! We used your ideas as a jumping off point and came up with this… btw we added the concrete planter after removing a couple large trees

Oh wow— that really looks amazing! Thanks so much for posting an update, what a transformation. And you’re much too kind in crediting me with anything, as clearly you all had a vision that far and away surpassed the elementary school drawing I shared 😂. Love the house color, yard, concrete work, all of it— am guessing you’re getting lots of compliments from the neighbors and passers-by!