Are you really asking about design? Or, are the thoughts and ideas floating around in your mind mostly to do with plants and plant combinations that would be attractive in your existing beds and borders? Landscape design and plant choice are not the same thing although they are not necessarily mutually exclusive. There are a few clues in your post that may inform design parameters: 1. "Transform the front of my house" states a desired aesthetic function. 2. You note the sparseness and disparate plant material. You seem to be expressing a desire for unity, which is a design principle. In design terms, however, the principle isn't fully realized through plant choice. 3. and, you also mention cost constraints. I guess I'm asking for more information. Are you most interested in selecting plants to form shrub / perennial combinations in your existing borders and beds? This, by the way, is where I am beginning to be comfortable with my abilities. Your best bet for this sort of help will be over in the perennial and cottage garden forums. The main thing they may tell you beyond plant considerations is to widen your borders. All sound to be a bit on the narrow side. You'll here 4 foot minimum and even deeper is better. Working in this way can be very satisfying and may fit best with your current life needs and goals. It, however, isn't design. Or, if it is, it's a small subset of a much larger picture. Why? As I understand it, and my own learning grows deeper as I try to write this, a design process has many, many steps before coming to specific plant choices. It would begin with an overall evaluation of your site, home, and personal desires for this property. It might entail a scale drawing detailing relationships and functional approaches to accentuate the strengths and mitigate the weaknesses in your home's exterior. The design would address issues like drainage, pathways, framing, views, entrances, etc. it might radically change the layout of your current beds. It might suggest shapes and forms of plant material that would best enhance the design without necessarily suggesting specific varieties. Is that more what you're after? Wellspring

hi. I understand. I just retired at 57 and am really enjoying my basic yard in an average subdivision in Vancouver wa. kids are grown. when one of them made me a grandpa I let them rent my home and after living in a studio rental for a year ive moved back home and bought a huge rv and have it plumbed and wired and in back "yard". i used to really enjoy lawn and garden but lost all interest about 7 years ago and everything went to hell. haha so i have entire front lawn, much to the amusement of my neighbors grass free and am loving growing annuals, veggies and flowers. now i am almost to the point of planting 2000 feet in lawn in back and next spring will garden in the area not in lawn back there too. how old your kids? do they get to go to school where you wanted? i hope i didn't come across wrong and apparently i didn't but man you got lots of work no matter what you do don't you? lol. i used to love yard work so much that in addition to working at port of Vancouver for 35 years, i bought a lawn aerator and did yard work for others on the side. probably didn't make a nickel looking back on it. i bring that up because i never used a verticutter (?) as you said you might to reseed. i always wonders how they worked. when someone wanted a complete lawn makeover , and they were never as huge as yours is, i always rounded their lawn up, thatched, aerated and then reseeded and top-dressed with some grass mulch stuff they sell in bales around here. its a by product of the huge Oregon grassed industry and is seed free and i wither dispersed by hand or rented a caged roller thing that worked great for that. im really interested in what you do. so when you get a minute down the road email me and send pics if you like. im keith dahl kgd1956@gmail.com thanks for getting back. oh by the way, here we are having one of the driest July's on record. no measurable rain since June, with no end in sight. im a heat wimp anymore so i get my stuff done in the morning and enjoy the AC in the RV as i please. life's good. im divorced so i don't have a "honey do" list. my neighbor dude says i have a "homie-do" list haha pic of grand daughter sleeping on me. im pretty crazy about her. :-)

That is definitely step 1 - figure out why the old grass died. It doesn't make any sense to plug ahead if you have a problem that is going to kill the new grass too. Also, what do you mean by "large" area. ie in square ft or acres. CA people tend to have a drastically different idea of a large lawn than midwesterners. If it is a couple hundred sq ft, the easiest fix is usually skimming the dead grass off with a shovel, leveling and laying sod. If the area is larger than that, you are usually better off killing the existing grass with herbicide, cutting it very short, raking up the debris, and then seeding and fertilizing.

Well, here's my hope that everything in your yard survives! I missed this post originally, but I like it. I'm still not growing nearly as much as I know could be grown in my climate, but my little plot of hardy arugula makes me happy every time I have a salad, knowing I'm eating more greens because I'm growing it, and consuming less petroleum for the same reason. Healthier for me and the earth. And each time I eat one of my own tomatoes or cucumbers or beans, I'm happy about that too, for the same reasons. I do that less, because I'm still learning and nothing is quite as easy as arugula. Another great book for gardeners, in this vein, is Animal Vegetable Miracle. Though I found her tomato sauce recipe bland, the rest of the book was great. Susannah