[Kevin]

This is the first year in the new house, so we figured we'd just see what grew. Lots of stuff. The front yard I'm mostly happy with except that we have a raised planter built up against the front of the house--sort of a 2-foot retaining wall with dirt in it. Most of it is filled up with a large variety of flowers. The rest is filled up with English ivy. Come Fall, I plan to nuke the Ivy--I hate the stuff, remove the retaining wall and do something different. Maybe hedges, dunno.

The back yard is another issue entirely. We had a little flooding problem this Summer, had a 10" rain (that isn't a typo), so we had a pretty serious French drain system installed on the back of the house. The rest of the back yard is a mess of weeds and feskue. The garden is nothing to write home about.

My plan is to regrade the back yard (I have about 3 tons of fill dirt from the French drain install) into a sort of split level thing with both levels being level or real close to it. Going to probably build a short retaining wall and some steps to split the levels. Again, with the roundup, will be nuking all of the grass (roundup), planting some Rembrant feskue and installing sprinklers. Got some general fun times planned in the garden too, but that's the wife's domain, not mine.

There is a strong likelihood a landscape architecht will be involved in my plans though. Don't want to flood my house or any of the neighbors again.