What to do with this awful garden?

[jjanice842]

I have a terrible east facing garden which is sunny all day until about 4.30pm. It slopes downwards and has eight steps from my back door down so is quite steep. I was thinking about replacing the whole patio and extending a little further, then having the turfed area levelled off and extending from both sides of the fence to give me more grass space. It will cover up the path, gravel and hideous retaining wall. Then a few steps from garage to be built with a flat path to back gate. I am also replacing garage roof to make it slightly less of an eyesore. What do you think? Any good gardeners out there / anyone with a good imagination that won't cost the earth to make this more usable and safe?

fence work is in progress btw!

As it's sunny all day it would be nice if you've room for table and chairs on the patio.

I think the path at the side would look better with slabs laid on grass like stepping stone sort of thing. Enough that it won't turn into a muddy track but still looking very much like part of the lawn. At the same time it creates a bigger space for DC to play. Levelling it out makes sense if it's too steep to play on easily.

It all looks a bit disjointed at the moment, as though it doesn't serve a purpose other than as a means of access to the house.

I'd replace the garage roof too, I can't see easily on my phone but it looks to not have guttering so I'm wondering if you'd get leaks eventually from water pooling in those dips in the ridged roof.

I've no idea about costs though.

I assume that you are going to have fences where the posts now are on each side.

In found this very useful to get me started. I think the point about getting a theme or look to work around is good, then just look at Instagram and YouTube for ideas, there's loads of stuff there - too much really!

Also come over to the Gardening thread! Plenty of ideas and advice, and you can let us know how you are doing. Everyone loves a transformation!

There's a lot of width lost on the path with the slabs, gravel and edging.

Curves create more illusion of depth/ width because they distract the eye from going straight to the furthest point.

Painting the garage a softer colour with different heights of planting would make it look less blunt.

I've got a small garden and repeating much of planting helps to stop it looking too cluttered and busy without looking straight at a fence.