I come to you, my fellow plant lovers and collecters for advice! :)

I have struggled (some say, "obsessed") with my landscaping efforts since last year when I posted to the landscape forum asking for advice. I was told that my house begs for a formal design, and to rip out everything I had done. I had plunked a large flower garden on a berm in the middle of my lawn and put in a flagstone path that was deemed too wide.

Since that time, I have been thinking about how I could make the current design work. One of the things that was mentioned was that the garden bisects the yard too much.

Here's a pic of the house in April, when not much is in bloom, but you can see the yard and slope to the street:

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Pic this spring

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I plan on:

* Extending the path around the left of the garden and going toward the street

* Putting stairs on the path/slope (goes to mailbox/bus stop)

* Extending the beds next to the fence to curve out to meet the new path

* Attaching a huge trellis on the front of the house from the ground to the roof on the right hand side between the 2 windows (sweet autumn clematis?)

* Attaching a trellis against the neighbor's orange fence and growing heavenly blue morning glories

My question to you is... should I put beds on the slope and easement toward the street or would that really be too much? (I was thinking a xeric garden with orn. grass, rocks, sedum, etc).

Maybe there's nothing I can do that will make this design work, but I really hate grass :)

Any suggestions you could throw at me would be appreciated :)

Kristine