Great to hear that you have decided not to paint the brickwork. Can I offer my opinion - I'd suggest painting the garage door and surrounding frame and the adjacent beam and column (currently white) in a dark charcoal/brown to match the ground floor brickwork try Dulux Namandji or Mali. I would redo the retaining wall with large boulders in a more freestyle layout than the current straight line and take up some of the concrete drive near the retaining wall to create a garden on the lower level, curved to still provide access to all of the undercroft unless you wish to enclose part of it with a large full height window. I'd love to see the wrought iron balustrade painted black. My home in the mid sixties had salmon coloured bricks, white window frames and fabulous turquoise gutters! The downpipes were painted to match the bricks thankfully - turquoise might have been a bit over the top! Good luck with your project, would love to see your progress. W

maybe plant stands with shelves and/or benches made with timber on bricks to create a seat or different height shelves so that sun lovers are up higher and shade lovers lower down and try some bigger pots and troughs that could have a bag of bean bag fill or crushed plastic bags (encased in sarlon cloth or similar) in the bottom of the big pots with a smaller pot and just a shalliow layer of potting mix in the top of the bigger pots...variety of pots sizes looks better and creates interest and are easier to move around if they're not full of more soil than needed for the individual plants..i have a great collection of different terracotta and concrete pots that have been scrounged or bought from recycle centres, charity shops, school and church fetes and potted herbs, bulbs and flowers would also be good for your potted portable garden..my daughter has a collection of indoor plants that have been moved around many differnt rental properties over the last 20 years and have survived indoors from Melbourne to Cairnes so consider indoors plants as well and happy new gardening

Wow, what an ambitious project! It's amazing to see how the heritage restoration combined with modern updates transformed the space into a unique oasis. I'd love to see more of the before-and-after pictures. Check out this URL for the full story!

So glad you removed yukkas, I would add a weeping birch, could be a bit too hot for a maple, as you mentioned snakes keeping it open by using beautiful river stones and select planting, large liriope is apparently unattractive to rabbits, you could keep the base as a pond or add the stones could look really beautiful