Be aware that artificial turf can get very hot underfoot. You could lay a narrow old brick or limestone paver path to clothes line for easy access and plant ground covers or low profile herbs (eg.oregano and thyme) to use in cooking. Hardy herbs or flowers such as rosemary, lavender, geraniums against the edges of the space toward the back. Even add some large long troughs of flowers on the retaining wall to pretty up the area. It looks like it could get quite warm there but maybe a jasmine or similar climber to climb up a frame attached to the part of the large wall where there is no clothes line. Good luck, it will be a lovely space I'm sure once you get started.

Timandra knows best, I believe, and has the experience to back her up. My comment is not plant-related, however. You have a front facade of door after door, and nowhere to go, except a narrow horizontal path. How about some front terraces, where you can burst out of one of those front rooms onto a sunny sitting area to have your morning coffee with a neighbor. Why not leave some doors open or change to glass, so the front terrace becomes an outdoor room, and extention of the interior space. How about a pedestrian walk out to the street, or over to the pictured tree, evergreen and plant bed, where you could have a shady terrace. Enjoy the outdoors, don't let your family become nature-deprived, with all the electronics that occupy our kids lives these days. Get them unplugged and outside - you too! You have a wonderful opportunity to achieve great things. Analyze first, then plan.

Perhaps if you look at your outdoor spaces as outdoor rooms, it may help you personalize and organize the areas. What I see in the photo is a small front yard divided in half, and a tree placed exactly in the center of the other half, within a little square of bed. I expect you would not do that with an interior room. A visitor will be compelled to race down the hallway to the front door, and probably not even notice the tree, since it is not part of a composition, a furniture grouping. You enter your living room to a welcoming composition of a furniture grouping, lamps, pictures on the wall, drapes (I hope) on the windows. You get the idea. Would you put a post lamp in the middle of an empty room? It would tend to diminish the size of the space and it's usefulness as a space. Would you put a carpet down the center of a room? -- only if you were creating two separate scenarios of equal size. You need some on-site advisers, whether they be landscape architects or interior designers, someone or more than one who will offer their experienced suggestions for you to consider, but not immediately act upon. You need to live with your new spaces and walk through their ideas for weeks, or months, before making a decision on how to proceed. Perhaps it would help you to read the thoughts of some international designers like Bunny Williams, with her book, On Garden Style, where you will get the feeling that the views of the outside rooms from within the house are as important as the views from the street. You will want to move the maple out of its central location, remove the central path, - and the conifers scare me. You really have a very small space up front here. Take a look in the park at the size of a mature conifer. They will occupy your yard and that of your neighbor, as they develop as nature intended. They are very beautiful, a work of art, but space-consuming. You may have room in the back yard, but be careful when blocking the magnificent views from within the house. Perhaps you will provide an entrance to your outdoor room over to the right, near your property line, with the tree, the lamp post, a small chair or bench, a bed of small plants that have beauty and fragrance throughout the seasons - a space you would like to sit in yourself, perhaps have coffee with the neighbor, or the kids hang out with a pal. Then have the walk work its way over toward the entrance area - not the door, but the welcoming area before the door, slow them down to enjoy the sequence, while providing a most pleasant view of this area from within. Make the plantings permanent, with no soil or mulch to show, after two years, as the groundcover plants mature and cover the beds. Keep all the annual plants in containers, to be stored away if empty, so the views of your spaces are not distracted by an open area in the bed where the annuals have departed, or an empty pot. Consider excluding your auto from your outdoor room, your welcoming area. You don't have room for a real screen, so just a suggestion, as a small hedge or plant bed to stop the eye before it gets to the drive. Perhaps the view beyond the drive is attractive, so all you need to filter from the view is the driveway pavement itself, as the car belongs in the garage, yes? Sometimes a little perimeter fence with a gate says welcome to my special space. In your case perhaps a darker color, not the typical white, which would be a high contrast to the house and not appropriate here, grabbing all the attention. What I have offered may be of no use to you, however, the intent of my words is to provoke you to analyze first, then plan. Consider alternatives from all viewpoints before deciding how to proceed, as these spaces and plants will be a part of your life for many years. Good luck to you. Continue the process at the tortoise pace, not the hare.

you can confirm the local legal requirements for pathways with your local council but we've had no difficulty moving materials and equipment down a 1m wide side passage only problem is most things have to be hand carried or wheelbarrowed and manpower X time taken = extra costs!! so we've made sure that we cleared away any obstructions, cut back or removed shrubs and helped with lifting and carrying whenever possible...our dining area is 3.2m wide x 5.3m long and has room for a buffet down one side and is open at the other side like yours and we easily seat 8-10 plus highchairs...your dining room looks fine although i would prefer the laundry door opening on the side opposite the stairs and not through the pantry and where's your cooktop and kitchen sink? btw please check the price of stacking doors with flyscreens compared to bifold glass doors with flyscreens as you may be very surprised at the price difference and bifolds take up so much extra space