Two plants I can suggest that I have chosen for my garden, are virtually unkillable, will grow in almost ANY soil or weather conditions & require little maintenance are: butterfly/african iris & Celtic Cascade tree. Both can be left to go a little wild for a natural look, or be cared for, to fit perfectly in a more formal garden. In regards to the iris, I removed my entire garden of mature, property damaging trees when I moved into my new house, but didn't want to wait years for a new mature garden, so I searched online for ppl selling/giving fully grown specimens away before they did renovations or re landscaped! The plants were a cinch to dig up, replant in my heavy clay soil & are thriving! I even cut some of them in half before planting and it didn't phase them!

Hey there suneerevo! Some great ideas in this thread. You could potentially turn the side area into a small cricket pitch/play area - include a small sand pit/outline a hopscotch zone. I'm not sure how old your children are, but I agree the area may be too small for basketball (unless it is just shooting practice) or bike riding. You could introduce astro turf (pic below is of the fresh cut turf which you can purchase from Bunnings) and shade sails above, and some fun outdoor furniture to encourage play and also relaxation. Example of some fun furniture perhaps :) The shade sails (examples below) will prevent the synthetic turf from getting too hot, and block out UV rays so your children can play or your guests can relax. You can also purchase these from Bunnings and install them yourself :) Hope this helps! Let us know what you end up deciding on.

Some comments, I hope they are helpful. Create a gravelled area for your fire pit. Laying a some sand, levelling off, a weed barrier and raking gravel is within the skill set of most handy people. Use treated timber for an edging to keep it neat. Buy a nice ready made steel fire pit. Buy some seating. Your planting lacks a scheme. Without a scheme your yard will not look put together the way professional landscaping does. Every plant has to be chosen for a purpose (texture, height, colour, privacy etc). You also have all your garden beds in a perimeter against the fence. That's fine for a starting point. But to make the place look inviting you need some garden beds in the yard too. Please avoid the common habit of putting shrubs in the middle of the lawn. It doesn't work well and also makes maintaining your lawn difficult. If you want to make say the entertaining area private from the kids play area a full garden bed is usually a better bet than just a shrub or two. By putting multiple shrubs of varying heights and a creeper in a larger section you create outdoor zones and properly define the area. What you really need to do is measure your yard, draw in your house and all paths and then start drawing in the entertaining area, the kids play area, the veggie patch etc. You will probably have to play around with the layout for a while to come up with something you like and works. Trust me, doing this first will save you a lot off $$ on plantings that don't work and you want to remove later. When you create garden beds do it with three heights. So something under 6" tall, something under 2ft tall and then something over 3ft. Not a definite rule but a good rule of thumb. By having multiple levels in your garden beds you create a more impactful and interesting garden. When gardens are meh, its usually because all the plantings are the same height and it looks flat. Take a look at these gardens to see what I mean.... Alright this fire pit is obviously professionally done, but what you need to look at is how the fire pit is clearly separated from the rest of the yard. The seating creates an outdoor room feel. But also if you look behind the seating there is also a large garden bed behind it. Although the scheme isn't finished my bet is that some tall screening plants are likely to be planted there to create a more intimate mood and shade from summer sun. Having garden beds define a feature really works. This is what I mean about having layers in your garden beds. If this yard was just a row of trees along the fence and then say a low hedge in this front bed it would look okay but not great. They have used different colours, textures and heights all in the same bed here to create something much more interesting. The planters in that corner also create height with the strappy plants. This is why you need to plan our your whole garden so you know that all the plants across the yard work together coherently.

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.