Thanks for all the advice you guys! I've learned a lot in the past couple months even though I'm sure I'll still end up making mistakes.

We finally got most of the plants in the ground this week and I wanted to share with you guys.

I live in SW 18

Basically, .... The left/back area is mostly roses with lavender and some low-growing camellias with penstemon, poppies and fleabane daisies mixed near the front...

... and then part of the sidewalls are lined with wisteria and star jasmine (I'll be adding in some clematis in the spring.)

the A/C will be hidden with white bicolor morea, white muscari and bearded irises. There's also a california lilac on the front/right area.

the small tree to the left back is a pink crape myrtle. And the small weeping tree near the center front is snowfountain weeping sakura. (leaving a space around it before the lawn starts) and then the more branchy tree near the right back is a kwanzan double-pink sakura.

The bare left corner there (in the below photo) will hopefully have an arbor covered in off-white Sombreuil and Gloire de Dijon climbing roses. Behind it, in the corner itself, will be light pink cl. Eden rose. :)

There are a lot of other roses back there, too (in the left/back area) ... some are arriving in January. My final rose list for the backyard ended up being:

Sombreuil

Gloire de Dijon

Eden

Belle Storey

Lady Banks

Compte de Chambord

Tiffany Hybrid Tea

Reine des Violettes

Sydonie

Raubritter

William Shakespeare 2000

Jude the Obscure

James Galway

Mortimer Sackler

The colors of most of the plants are purple (rosemary, wisteria, lavendar, lilac and bearded irises), light pink (roses, penstemon, camellias), dark red (roses), and white/light yellow (roses, poppies, daisies, bearded irises, star jasmine, muscari, bicolor morea, agapanthus). There are no bright yellows, pure reds or oranges.

Inbetween the broken concrete patio, there will be whooly thyme, and the large patch of darker dirt you see in the middle is going to be lawn. Most of this is going to be done before New Years!

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one slightly closer up photo so you can see the rose babies.

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I'm hoping once things grow in that it will {{gwi:65021}}

scrapped-together-in-photoshop-panoramic-overhead-view taken a few hours before the above photos.

Don't mind the jagged lines,... the lawn shape is actually softly curving, but it's a bad photoshop mashup. The patio is a curved shape, too.

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and then if you're curious, the patio started out like this (below). I'm so glad I was able to have a landscaper do this for me. It looked like a lot of work!

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and our backyard looked like this just a couple weeks ago:

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