Before and Almost After of Front Yard

First up we have our lovely front yard (winter picture shown in earlier post). You can see that the trees have filled in and the roses are in full bloom. The lavender to the right is about to go nuts and the bee stay hovering, waiting for the flowers to bust out.

Yes, that's the same yard. Mr. Monkey discovered a leak in our main water line to the house and in fact we were hemorrhaging 5 gallons of water a day! Yikes - this is bad for most people but for dedicated environmentalists we felt especially guilty. Once Mr. Monkey discovered the source of the leak he went to town, renting both a trencher and a jackhammer in one weekend!

We received some excellent design ideas for the front yard from Rachel Foster, a local master gardner and landscape designer. But now Mr. Monkey has different ideas and he wants to get rid of the river rock. The initial idea was to move the river rock into a circle where most of the lawn is currently. The idea was to have a feature/sculpture in the center of the circle surrounded by lavender plants in the center and on the outside of the circle we spread out the many shrubs, roddies, azaleas, that we currently have cramped along the fence. By the front door and major walk area we would have flagstone laid together tightly. But now Mr. Monkey is reconsidering and wants the river rock gone altogether - he doesn't like it - but most people do. Wish us luck negotiating the design for the front yard. . .