Bulbs! Bulbs bulbs and more bulbs! The perfect way to freshen up for spring. Its so simple and fun and they look after themselves and give a great look. Check online suppliers like tesselaar and garden express who often sell bulk landscaping amounts of bulbs for really good prices. You can get hundreds of bulbs for well under $100. They often have a mix for for warmer areas if you are a little further north. Plant them out in the garden beds, and around the trees and wait for them to come up. Every year they will give you a great show. If you are well north, then opt for daylillies and agapanthus and clivias. They will give you variety and low maintenance colour year after year. The simplest way to give a nice look is to use a mass effect and repeat one or two plants or one colour over the entire front yard. For example choosing say purple and planting rows of lavender, salvia, alliums, and grey foliage plants like lambs ears and rosemary/ westringia.

No-one can help you unless we have visuals with photos and some description of the area sizes, which state/town is your home, and where north is in relation to your front and back yards. Do you have existing plant material that needs to be factored in, or children, animals that will have a bearing on the advice?

@Emma I, What you're suggesting is a pretty bold move and irrespective of whether you are permitted to do it in the end by your respective shire and other authorities, I can't stree enough that for all the money you are thinking of spending on this project and the lengths to which you are intending to go with removing windows, dig a huge hole for the pool etc... that you use some of your finances to employ an architect as suggested by EmileECLC to make sure that this massive transformation becomes everything you dream it will be!! You must be absolutely sure of regulations surrounding pools like mentioned by mazgardiner about not being able to directly enter a pool from the house for example. Hubby and I are building our own home and we decided to have an indoor pool. We were originally having a sliding door leading outside of the pool, only to find that we were not permitted to have this access from the pool outside and I expect it was the sliding door, as with mazgardiner that was the issue, as it would be far more difficult to make it a self closing and lockable door. Fortunately we had already decided to change the slider to an awning window instead and just as well. The access into the pool from inside the home is a hinged door with a self closing mechanism and has the handle positioned at 1.5m from the floor. Furthermore, we were told by the window manufacturers, that any glass near a pool area had to be safety glass by law, so your stacker doors or any other windows that form part of the new pool area, will need to be upgraded and be much more expensive just so you know, about double the cost of a standard window. Another safety feature with our awning windows was that the wind out chain could only open to a maximum of 100mm, again law, just like the bars in a safety fence. Our building inspector tried to tell us they would not be allowed and that we would have to have external bars fitted and have the windows permanently screwed shut but further contact with our state building commission deemed the 100mm gap to be safe and adequate. Don't just accept something that seems wrong, if need be, take it higher as we did and succeeded, so again another reason to have a professional helping you through the maze of regulations.

you could make a dramatic change to the exterior with paint, I would blend with colour of your roof, 'raku' for your gutters, verandah, posts and lace work and 'stepney' for window frames, garage door and under window, large beautiful pot at front door, designer bench on verandah,widen garden beds, hedge under window and add feature trees for height, gorgeous.