I was wondering if anyone could give us some landscaping help or advice, we have a blank slate the block is clear and relatively flat. In south western NSW (riverina region), I think the soil is pretty much clay and the water tends to sit on it in the middle of the yard. The block is 1552 square metres.
We're wanting something easy to maintain as with 2 young children and a dog we would rather be playing with them than gardening all weekend (although I know it will need some time/work initially). It needs to be child and pet friendly, we were thinking of possibly putting a vegie garden in the north western corner. It will need grass and an area for kids to play which can be on grass or anything else if you can suggest something better.
Out the front next to the driveway we will have grass so that we can access the backyard with a car and trailer, but somewhere there we will need to have a garden of some type.
Here is a site plan
This is a pic of the house, taken from near the shed looking to the street
this one looks back toward the house from about the middle of the yard
There are many other gardening gurus on here with much better advice then me, so I'm not sure why no one has responded to you yet.
But... if it was me I would definitely put mostly grass in the backyard for the kids so you can give them a trampoline and or swing set if they are still quite young. You could also put a cubby house in a corner and mulch under that. Something that I would like to do but we don't have the space
As far as plants go, I would run some gardens along the fence lines and keep it simple. I have used lilipillis in my yard mostly for screening to hide an ugly fence and give some privacy.
I would run some garden beds around those windows on the front too and probably a centre stand alone garden bed as a feature with a nice tree in the middle?