Still cannot believe I did this. Second and third year, none of the plants will work for you as I'm in 9B but here is mine. What a difference a year makes : r/NoLawns (reddit.com) I water new plants for the first year so most of this hasn't been watered for 1 full year. Make it a full garden with trees, shrubs, grasses as well as perennials, annuals and bulbs. Spring seems to take care of itself and you have to work hard to make late season just as wonderful. Concentrate on getting late season stuff on the shopping list before fitting in the wonderful spring flowers. Most of my stuff also has great foliage too. Folks grow Aloe for the leaves as much as the flowers and the yellow flowering Bulbine has nice tufts of bright green onion shaped leaves. More on reddit.com

Weeding is a fact of plant life. Just please if you pave, make something easy for the next occupant to rip out, and plan for proper storm runoff so you don't flood neighbors. And good on you to be honest from the getgo. Many of us do no lawn because we LOVE gardening in the ground, but many of us also do NOT love gardening and must still deal with it. A crazy suggestion: if you have good sun and soil, consider a way for others to garden your yard in exchange for the produce and maybe some rent? Kinda plantation mentality unless it feels like a community garden, but look at this for ideas: yardyum.com More on reddit.com

Also see r/NativePlantGardening . The sidebar will have info on nurseries, how to go about landscaping with natives and more. ID the all shrubs and research how they can look in a garden before removing. I bet some would prefer to grow into small trees, that would be fantastic. Perhaps some are native but don't count on it. So long as they aren't actively working against the reason we want to grow natives [seeds all over, doesn't support wildlife] it's nice to have mature plants to work with. I removed all but a lanky native toyon, non native orange tree, small cotoneaster and some Dietes and just that little bit of stuff helped the garden look more mature from the start. Leaving shrubs in blobs means a lot of extra work and they look extremely unnatural. Try to return them to natural form by going inside the plants and cutting out the too long bits instead of shearing. Search how to rescue sheared shrubs, am sure there are great resources out there. I suspect the large shrub you are worried about would be an asset once in a natural form and allowed to grow up. My hope is that grown in a more natural form the shrubs will be different shapes and sizes. Then fill in around them with native bunch grasses, ground covering shrubs and perennials and so on. If a shrub or two towards the rear ends up not working out then have a small native tree in mind to replace them. I think repeating one plant many times brings some cohesiveness to the plan, see if you can figure out one plant that really appeals to you and use 5-10 of just that one plant. Could be a ground cover, a grass, perennial that looks good in several seasons. This looks like a strolling garden to me so rather than just having a narrow work path make one from gravel, mulch, flagstones or paver about 3-5' wide that makes a gentle curve through the garden. As you walk the garden this winter planning what goes, stays, gets planted and if and where the path is going you may find a natural spot for a birdbath, fountain or other garden ornament that you can see from the house and discover as you walk both the strolling path and main approach to the house. More on reddit.com

Concrete A tripod for your camera More on reddit.com