Good soil + strawberries and herbs + pig face + myoporum purpureum + succulent/cacti + paint a beautiful colour (with excellent surface preparation). All and any of those will take interesting but ordinary, which you currently have, to gorgeous and eyecatching. Go for it! May the force be with you! ;-)

Hi Fivedock If you're using a tile that looks like timber I think you would be best using the same tile from the front entry throughout. However if you used a tile that looked like stone or concrete in the kitchen/ back area for example, you could possibly use another that looked like timber in the front entry/ living room with fireplace. Or vice versa. This only works because you have a contrast between stone and timber and there's a reasonable demarcation between the living room with the fireplace and the back area. It looks terrible if you have two different timber tiles or two different stone tiles.

Hi Chris The cheapest option is Grind & Seal, but we usually recommend Mechanically Polished Concrete for inside of a home. This is by far a better option, if you were to go for a Matte or Satin finish it is less expensive than a higher gloss finish. Mechanically Polished Concrete does not have a top coat sealer requiring drying and curing time and does not need re-applying in the future which will save time and money in the long run. Because Polished Concrete does not require drying or curing time it can be used as soon as the process is completed unlike the Grind & Seal option. All floors are slippery when wet, a non slip agent can be added to a top coat sealer which would be the Grind & Seal method which we do apply in a shower area if there is not a shower base. Polished Concrete in Matte and Satin finish does have a very good slip rating, has no grout lines as with tiled floors where dust can get trapped therefore it is a wonderful easy to clean flooring solution. Hope this helps, I have provided some details regarding the 2 main processes below There are 2 different finishing processes / methods that are commonly called Polished Concrete, they are very different so it is important that you know the difference & which process/method you want and which is being used on your concrete Polished Concrete - 12 to 17+ step process During this process the concrete is ground to the desired level of stone exposure. After grinding the concrete surface, the Polished Concrete process begins. This process has a densifier applied in multiple stages that is absorbed into the concrete which hardens and strengthens the concrete. A Polished Concrete Floor is Polished in Multiple stages in a Refining Process using diamond tooling & resin pads. A penetrating sealer is applied in the final buffing stage to complete the process The "Polished Concrete" process has "NO TOP COAT SEALER" applied therefore there is no drying or curing time required so your space can be used as soon as the process is completed Grind & Seal (a 3 to 4 step process) This is NOT Polished Concrete. Grind & Seal is often referred to as Polished Concrete, this is the cheaper substitute that gives a "Polished Concrete Look" With the Grind & Seal method the concrete is ground to the desired level of stone exposure and a TOP Coat Sealer is applied such as water based, solvent based, urethane, acrylic or epoxy requiring 5-7 days to dry & cure

Bear in mind that lawn needs to be mowed. How practical will that be in that tiny courtyard? If you want to remove the tiles I would be inclined to put gravel and stepping stones down with a walkable creeper in patches. There's a good amount of sun there so you should be okay with many choices. Choose a variety that works well in part-sun with a nice fine leaf. Thyme is actually a fantastic ground cover that smells great when you walk on it, tiny leaved, loves to be in dry places and is covered in masses of either white or purple flowers at the end of summer. At the moment your plantings are a bit more spanish than french, which is fine you could take inspiration from Riveria places like Nice. To go a bit more french I would swap out the succulents for either lavenders or roses or both! Both will work beautifully with the geraniums and olive tree. I purchased a beautiful lavender this year called Forte from Bunnings. It's a spanish styled lavender with the big petals on the flower head and is the most vivid shade of violet imaginable. Very fast growing in 6 weeks mine have doubled in size. Nice low mounding variety that will look good in pots. Floribunda roses are ideal for courtyards and small spaces as the bush only reaches around 80cm high and sends our bunches of roses on the bush. Floribunda means abundant flowers. I would avoid hybrid tea's as they are a large bush with loads of thorns. Or a climber would be good there too. My personal favourite is Lady of Shallot. But I also have one called Hot Cocoa which is very special and a floribunda. Roses love courtyards especially near a brick wall that radiates heat onto the bush. It keeps blackspot away because water never accumulates on the actual bush due to the heat. We associate roses with England but actually they come from the middle east and are a hot and dry country plant.