I'd have the pool on the right side of the yard, the pool fencing would work /flow much better on this side and seeing as your children would probably spend more time on the grass area than in the pool it enables you to see this area from the kitchen . It would be nicer to walk from your kitchen through to alfresco and onto the grass in a straight line while the right side of your alfresco would have the pool fence and this could be an area to sit and watch once your kids are much older. Contrary to an above comment we have successfully grown a nice hedging screen between our pool and fence in only 60cm of garden bed so you don't need metres. Our space between our house and fence is 7m and our pool is 4.1m wide. We had to have 2m space from the house to pool which only left 90cm on the other side and our paver is 30cm! I think it'll work for you. Good luck ☺

what's your climate, will you ever want to roof over the pool, are there any external doors along the back of the house that need to be excluded from the pool area, is there an external door for a quick dash to the bathroom from the patio and garden without having to go through the new fenced in pool area, are there any trees that will become a future problem for the new pool?? a rough site plan would help answer these questions

You have lots of posts Belinda! Thinking about this one and the one about lillypilly along the fence line, perhaps you could move the figs from deck and plant along fence. Unless you are on top of pruning and shaping the figs, they may quickly outgrow the pots. We had 5 similar size figs in pots, which we used to topiary but it wasn't long before they had split the pots and grown to about 4-5m high! They provided excellent privacy as were quite thick. We did have to cut them down eventually as they were too high to maintain and they were too close to our pool. I'm not a huge fan of Lillypillies - mock orange / muraya are a quick growing one you might like. Either way, if on your deck, you'll need to make sure the planters/pots are large enough to allow the trees to grow enough so that they provide privacy.

Hi Laura, I also love your inspiration photo. I think you're on the right track for what you want. It looks like an early summer image due to the jacaranda flowering so I would try and get a bit more colour in the planting and spread your flowering season to be as long as you can by choosing winter, spring and summer flowering plants. It appears that you have the ability to build one side of the garden up as you have a foudation below the fence. You shouldn't build it up in front of the actual fence as it will eventually rust out. If you do build it up in part, you could build seating into this to make two uses out of the retaining. You could intersperse this with the cortens to reduce the cost as that wont work so well for seating. Recycled timber could do the job and maybe mix with some gabions, which you can do on the cheap yourself if you have a source of rubble or stones. C.