I live on a hill, and do not have an attached driveway. I use a shared driveway that ends up in my backyard. I think that the problem with my backyard is that it is too large and "undefined" to have a cozy space, yet too small to divide into separate rooms. I am OK with the beds along the walkway to the house. It's the ones in the back and against the fence that need help. I have no plans to remove the trees. The pine can be worked around, but not the maple (roots!).

The maple area seems to create a "hole". Although it now looks like a junk pile, it is usually used as a seating area. I would like to improve this area somehow. The vegetable garden is in the back.

I removed several large trees from the area with the arbor and have a few new trees planted that will eventually grow and help screen the house beyond. I am attached to both the arbor and the rose growing on it. The beds are much fuller than they appear in the photo (many small shrubs, most roses not apparent).

The side garden against the fence seems to recede from view for some reason, although it is nearly 12 feet at its deepest. I lost a few large shrubs due to flooding from my neighbor's yard (situation has been rectified).

To sum up this ramble: I guess I am mostly asking for help shaping the back and side beds and how to create a better-looking seating area around the maple. Here are a few more pictures:

Yard is very narrow. Here's a picture from the side, and look another big tree!

Looking towards house

And here's coming up driveway, showing how the side border recedes.

Thank you for any insight you can provide.
Maureen

A recieving form is basically relating shapes to one another, be they bed shaped, lawn shapes or berm shapes so that the peices look that they "go" together, which unifies an area over a stretch of negative space. For example looking from space at the earth, it's easy to see how S. America (brazilian coast) can fit into the west coast of Africa. This type of re-structuring your lawn shape and bed shapes will help to bring together all of the areas of your backyard into pleasant spot.

Also consider adding some berms for changes in elevation (assuming drainage won't be adversely impacted)to add some interest and aid in the recieving form effect.

Look up some plants like horny-goatweed.

I do not think I am consciously focusing on the big trees. I was trying to incorporate them, somehow. This is difficult as they are not exactly graceful specimens. I wanted to border the garden area on 4 sides so as to detract from the cars, so I brought the garden up past the pine about 10 feet or so. This created a new problem - a "hole" where the maple is. I was thinking about eradicating the grass here and covering it with mulch to create a more defined seating area? I suspect that this will not work either, as it might cause the focus to be???

I really like the idea of shaping the lawn but it seems to spill out in all directions.

I was attemping to draw an oval for the lawn :-) I'd put a curved bench (to pick up on the oval shape) under the maple tree. I'd paint the shed a dark olive-y green to fade it into the background (on my 'to do' list this spring for our shed...). I'd move the plants that got replaced by lawn to make a continuous bed along the path and lawn to under the pine. I'd leave a grassy path along the driveway - so it links nicely to the stone one and frames the new bed on the drivevay side. I'd put some trees and shrubs in the back corner and near the shed. I'd add a few shrubs in the foreground of the bench area and fill in that side with perennials and ground covers. So essentially you'd have the lawn surronded by a garden and set off by the stone and grass path on the driveway side. You'd probably need a path through the bed on the house side for access to and from the lawn - or perhaps you might want a patio on the house side to replace some of the bed there. The ideas need some tweaking but something to think about...

Just a "big picture" point not to take that design approach off the table arbitrarily. It may be that you wish to approach the yard as one large "room" and that is your choice.

Painting the shed is a good idea. The rose growing on the back used to cover most of it but was damaged by the heavy, heavy snow we got this year. There was a large pine in front of the shed that was removed because it was shading the tomatoes but I am lamenting the loss of it now.

It occurred to me though that some people are probably saying 'Isn't this just the reviled 'perimeteritis'?' I would argue that it isn't. As I see it, in the case of 'perimeteritis', the shape of the lawn is the more-or-less accidental fall-out of shaping the garden beds. In the case of my rectangular lawn and my scribbles above, the starting point was shaping the lawn in a deliberate and obvious way (the oval above needs to be much more refined and obviously an 'artificial' shape to have more impact). The garden beds get adjusted as needed to make the central lawn shape. The end result is the lawn has a substantial presence on its own. So you have two things of interest - the lawn and the garden - instead of just the garden. Don't underestimate the power of the shape of the lawn - when people come into the backyard for the first time, that lawn literally stops them in their tracks and they tend to say 'Wow' or 'OMG!' It's a response to both the beauty and the unexpectedness of it. Their next impulse to to go wander through the paths in the surrounding beds to see what else might surprise them there.