It's a beautiful space, I'd spend more time on design and concept. Keep the window in mind.

Gerald

Kane,

If I wanted a Zen type garden I think the red brick walls might bother me a bit. My first thought was I, might want to to stucco them & then I remembered seeing a sort of bamboo screening material being used to cover a wall. That led me to attempting a composite picture with both stucco and some bamboo screening.

You also mentioned trees, so I added a couple, plus some other things, but whether it achieves a Zen effect I can't judge. Anyway, this is how it ended up -

Click to see

Herb,

Many thanks for your efforts in producing that wonderful image. It is not exactly what i want but i will take some of your good ideas, especially the bamboo screen to soften the red brick. I am trying to create something like this but with more rocks:

p.s. what software are you using to do these pictures?

Here is a link that might be useful: Zen Garden

Kane - I use a mixture of software - ACDSee, and Photoshop. Manipulate a picture in Photoshop: it's saved as a psd file; open the psd file in ACDSee and save it as a high quality jpeg file; then take the jpeg file back to Photoshop for the next manipulation. I'm sure this could all be done in Photoshop, but their 'layers' system is (to me) incomprehensible.

Hi : )

Check out the botton course (row) of brick.

When making final soil grade and before adding gravel water should run away from home. Looks like the unfinsihed grade thus far is pitched towards house , corner of courtyard like space.