Unfortunately the best way is to remove the sod.  I do this with a spade or shovel, cut down through the edge of the grass roots, then go horizontal and kick the edge of the tool with my boot to cut between the grass layer and the soil level.  

Then I turn the bed with a fork and trench out the "edging" trench, piling that in the bed.  

Depending on what you want to do with the bed (what you plan to grow) you would then either apply a good landscape fabric or not, and a couple inches of mulch.

One thing to consider is the edges of your kidney shaped bed.  Will it touch the hardscape on both ends?  or not?

Probably the best choice for that shape with the hardscape wrapping around the two sides as you have it, is to have a few inches of sod remaining as a "carpet" around both sides.

Another option you might consider is making the bean wrap from one side to the other of the hardscape--like from one hard surface to another, and have the "corner turn" also be bed.  You could raise the kidney bean slightly with a little topsoil and mulch, then have either annual color plantings in the "corner" or fill it with tufts of ornamental grass like variegated liriope (monkey grass).

Okay that's way more opinion than you asked for.

That's a nice little tree, btw!

ETA:  Be sure to give enough depth to your kidney bean shape that you have a nice curve to it.  Otherwise you'll lose the effect of it.  :0)

A lot of hydrangeas are such that you can change the color simply by changing the acidity of the soil.

Add some acid--you get blue.

You can find the exact cultivar you're considering, then type it into a search engine with "Can I make Hydrangea macrophylla "Kitties with sigs" blue using acid?"

That's a completely bogus name, by the way.

That will be beautiful with the colors of your house!

Are you going to be able to do a little curve in the bed?

If so, the opportunities for the plantings around it are more open.

if it's going to be straight, try to move it a little further out from the house if you can, to give a little more room right in front of the porch.

If you CANNOT move it, and need to keep it in same position and straight, you can still ease the edges of it with your plantings.

ETA:  Lemme see if I can do a little tutorial about walks and landscaping them.  Dunno how far I'll get this evening.

I think that looks fine!

You may decide to expand it a little as the seasons go by and the tree grows, and if so, you can incorporate bending .

What do you plan to put in it?

If you and your wife like mums, you can get those that are perennial (they come back season after season).  Tuck three or four in there in your favorite colors (cut an x in your landscape fabric for placement of the root ball.      

If you want something evergreen, try dwarf nandina if it grows in your area.  The red ones are small and make nice understory plantings for a smaller bed.

Huge improvement with that larger bed.

Can you elaborate a little?

What is the location with regard to anything else?

What is the purpose of this plant?

Is it strictly to choke out other plants?

Is it to provide privacy?

Is it to look nice?

Will the surrounding area be mowed?

Will this "fenceline border" be maintained at all?  

What?

Can you give me an overhead view?

If you don't want to post it, I get that.  maybe IM it to me, or if you need to email, I'll give you and address.

It's really hard to give advice with no overall sense of your property.

Okay so the new house sits right on top of the "trees gone" bubble, basically, and faces the road down in front?

Okay.  

Are you going to continue using that ingress where they brought in the house, as an ingress to the property?

Or is it okay to close that off?

ETA:  Also...the "trees to be removed this fall"--

Are you removing those because they're shading an area where you want to grow things?

@Rat_Patrol

I have not gotten back to this, for reasons you will see in the thread I've just started, but I don't mean to ignore it.

It sounds like you have a lot going on, and nothing will begin until you're settled and getting on with tree removal.

Bump me an IM if you need anything immediate as far as design, will you?  I'll hopefully have a little more time in a week or three.

@ejeviking

Those stones are amazing.  I love big rocks.

What are they, and if I might ask, where did you get them?

They are actual stone, right?  

I've considered using old busted-out concrete for steps in terracing like that before.  Wouldn't look as nice as yours, but once it's set, it makes a nice effect.

@watercat

So...the "step" of brick wall keeps confusing me.  Are you talking about the one little step where there are sometimes bricks/edging right next to the grass you've removed?

I mean the edging running from the side of the open garage door, down to the strip of bright sunlight?

Are you saying that the little step has been doing something to the drainage?

And do you have a current drainage ISSUE?

Or are you worried about creating one with the work you do?

Wow, that's great!

And I bet you save a bunch on shipping!!!!

Incredible resource, to be able to get those and to move them.

There is nothing like big stone to make a project classic and grand.

@Watercat

I had to look back to see your original questions. I'd kind of gotten lost since it's been a bit since you first asked them (I've slept since then.  )

I have more questions (I know, shocker.)

You have your shed up on blocks, which suggests to me that your back yard is soggy, overall, and maybe not because of the little steps that were put in for your garden.  

Now maybe I've misread that, but your concerns about water management make me need to ask some of these questions before making suggestions so I don't offer a solution that will not be the best for you overall.

So...

1-Is your backyard wet a lot?  Does it squish when you walk on the grass after a rain?

2-Is your shed on blocks because water stood back there?  (Not sayin your shed should be absent a foundation.  I'm just trying to get a view of how bad this was to make you put it up on blocks.)

3-What is around you outside that fence?  What is the lay of the land?

Are there other people's houses back there?  Are their yards higher than yours?

Has the situation changed recently?  I mean...was it dry before, then somebody built something  (or YOU built something), and now it's wet?

4-Once the water hits the driveway, where does it go?  Looks like it goes both toward that other building, and downward toward the street.  What's down there, and what's keeping it out of that building on the other side of the driveway?

5-ETA another question  (or two)-

The shed at the head of the driveway  (the one with the sniper perch beside it).  It looks to me, from what you have drawn and described (the "slope" arrows really, really help) that water comes down your yard and must hit that shed--at least the front portion of it.  Do you have any rot there?

6-You obviously want (or wanted at one time) a garden.  Do you still? Do you have a spot for it if this one goes away?

I know this seems like a lot to ask for a simple "how do I fix my yard" but the fix depends on the root of the problem, and how extensive the problem is.  Drainage is not hard to manage, but you have to go at it correctly.  If you do it right, you can fix everything in one go.  If you don't, you'll create a different issue for yourself, trying to fix the first one.

So..."right of the shed" is behind the sniper perch at the head of your driveway?  

And in the lower photo, the dumpster is up against the "right" side of the driveway shed?  (right being if I was standing at the bottom of your driveway)

Trying to get a layout of your property.

BTW, that's a lovely rose trellis.

ETA:  In front of that gate...

Is there a known reason why the grass grows in those lines?

Is it just planted and hasn't gotten established?

Or is something else going on?

Okay.

I could be dead wrong here, since I have not seen the situation in person, but I don't feel like the blocks you were using for steps actually held back significant water.  it takes a solid wall to do that, mostly.   This is what's making me squint at it and wonder whether just removing those is going to fix the issue.  

On the one hand, my advice would be that you need to get a qualified person in your area to look at the yard, because the best I'm going to do is a guess for you, and to fix this, you may need to invest some money and move some dirt. Somebody qualified in there with a transit to tell exactly where the low spots are, and determine exactly how water will move, might be the best choice.

However....since I'm here and you're here...

My gut is telling me that you need a drain tile or three in that back yard.  

I say this because

a-I am really concerned about the slope downward toward your house.  There may BE a drain tile along that side of the garage already, and if so, good.  Whatever you do, you do not want to funnel water at your foundation, and the slope of your yard is doing exactly that.  If there is a drain tile, though, you ought to be able to see the exit point somewhere.  (I would think so, anyhow)

b-drain tiles allow you to (partially) direct the water where you want it to go.  Without regrading the entire back yard, there's not much other way to do that.    

I wish I could see your property in a heavy rain.  I'd like to get a sense of how the water moves across it--where it runs, where it pools, where it hits an obstacle and runs around said obstacle.

The negative, of course, is that the tiles require digging, and usually, installation of some gravel (depending on the situation) then recovering with soil and sod.  It's a mess and a lot of work.

Could I landscape that back yard to create terraces and  direct the water where I wanted it to go?  

Yes.  But in doing so, I would install tile that spilled out the bottom of the terraces where I wanted it to exit.  I would create the egress points and use those to my advantage.  AND on top of that, that includes no plan for wee ones and their play sets (which you referenced earlier, so I assume this is a goal).

All that said, I'm NOT a landscape architect, nor am I an engineer, and my use of tiling and water flow manipulation is, while somewhat educated, absolutely not extensive.

So...here are the options I see for you.

1-It will cost you very little to smooth off the tiny terraces you have there, and create an even slope down to your driveway.  You will need to sod it, not sow it with seed, because of the flow issues you're addressing.  The seed will wash, it sounds like, even from being watered. I am concerned that after a season of getting the sod established, when you have a rainy spell, the issue is not going to change significantly.  I would like to be wrong about that, and maybe I am.  Maybe the "leveling" of the ground in those two little terraces slowed it enough to make it squishy.

I have a small concern that the DRIVEWAY itself could be creating part of the problem (assuming it's a nice thick concrete driveway) by creating sort of a "pool" out of your backyard.  It may be that the water runs OVER the driveway only when it's "filled the pool"  created by the driveway edge, and the foundation of your garage.  This also may be completely off base.  I've seen this happen before, but the circumstance was really odd.

2-It will cost you more and be a lot more work to bring in a load of soil and slope away from your garage foundation properly (best I can tell it is not sloped away from the garage at this point. that might be a trick of the camera, though) and then create a gentle, easy swoop down to the driveway from the back fence.   it would also raise the level of your back yard slightly, which would probably help with the movement of the water.

If it were me, I'd probably use a tiller and a rake, bust that corner up, smooth it out and downward, and the result will likely be removal of some soil from there (a few buckets anyway) which you can add to your garden or use to build a slope away from the garage foundation.  then I would sod it or get some type of soil retention matting with embedded, quick-growing seeds to establish a ground cover there, until I could get the sod I want in there.  Basically take the level of that corner of the yard down a bit.  

Then go through a season and see what happens.  Maybe that'll fix it.

I think I've gone way beyond what you asked, (I know, shocker, right?) and I'm not sure I've actually answered what you want to know.

If you're going to go the down and dirty "try the easy, cheap way first" borrow or rent a tiller, get in there with tools and some buckets, and smooth off that corner.

It also may help you to get that sniper perch shed out of there.  That roof is a water collector, and I'm guessing at least one side of it dumps into the squishy part of the back yard.

Tell me if this doesn't help, or if I've come at it from the wrong direction.

Kitties

Can't wait to see it finished.

I know you've got 110, but if you're willing to transform to low voltage, the best landscape lighting is low voltage, because that keeps it from becoming what I call "glare bombs."

Low voltage lighting casts a lovely, natural-looking light  for uplighting into trees, downlighting like moonlight, and pathway lights  or marking steps, without making your eyes stop down to f 2 million like a camera lens (yes, that's quite the exaggeration with regard to f stops by the way, for anybody who actually does photography)

Low voltage lighting shows off the landscape without destroying your night vision, but can still be quite bright, depending on the fixture you choose.  It's the way to make your lighting look like God put it there instead of people.

What is that going to be? Is it your driveway, with steps coming up to the house?

I was going to suggest some small low-voltage fixtures set at the base of the wall, washing up onto it, with a couple of them here and there illuminating the steps.  With low voltage, you can still do this safely, and I *think* you can bury the transformer there by the 110 outlet, in a waterproof casing.

May be some of the guys/gals here who know more about the new offerings for those purposes (transformers in wet spaces).  I'm sure they've come a ways since I did my last installation.

Low voltage is safe.  You can cut into it or accidentally destroy it, and nobody gets shocked.

You're welcome, and ask more if you hit snags and can't see how it would work.  The uplighting set in the ground along the base of your wall will wash across that wall and accentuate the roughness and texture of the stone, the cracks between them...all that. (side-lighting does that to everything.  It's why old actresses don't want to be lit from the side.  Only from directly in front, with the camera up high for closeups.)

The low voltage wiring can be tucked into cracks and generally "hidden" very easily in an established installation.  The fact that you are not finished, and could still trench for a tile and/or sink the "uplights" into the ground so they are flush with that bottom layer is a real plus.  Nothing would be sticking up down there.  Just a small piece of tile installed vertically with the fixture sunk into it.  If it's done in sod down there, it won't quite "disappear" though and you do have to pay attention to the fact that there will be a HOLE there of a sort.  That wall does not look like the sort you would sit on, at least from what I can tell  It looks too tall, so people mostly won't be four inches from it with their feet, but do consider the activities you want down there, and how the installation might affect them.

Just because it would look stunning from down in the yard,  doesn't make it the right thing for your purpose.

ETA:  Those stones that protrude (I took a second, longer look) must be for seating.  so you could use the back corners of those, mount the fixtures so they go at an angle, and still wash across the face of the wall with (very) soft light.  You don't want that to be the main light, just barely there.  Like moonlight.

Some thoughts on good landscape lighting:

(I want to add, right here up front, that it's VERY difficult to photograph landscape lighting, and the human eye is better than a camera at seeing shadows and light, and detail in both at the same time.  I'm going for the principle of "less light is usually enough" with these illustrations, and do not mean to imply that any of these are badly done.  They're not.)

REMEMBER....

The human eye is INCREDIBLY sensitive and adapts to a wide range of light situations.  You need FAR LESS LIGHT than you think you need in a given situation.

Light spreads.  A little light goes a long way.  

Think about how a single candle can light the entire room.   You can read by the light of an oil lamp (no, you don't want to, but you're not going to be studying microbiology at night on your patio, either.)

When in doubt, go for LOWER LEVELS OF LIGHT than you think you need, in strategically placed fixtures.  You are more likely to be pleased with the overall effect.

This is pretty well done.    Still, the lights are a little hot, which is a common thing for people to do.  NOTE how you can't see what's in the shadows?    That's the sign that the lights are too strong.  If you can't see detail in the shadows, your lights are too bright.
You are going for the effect of a full moon.  You know how you can almost read a newspaper in that light, yet it does not burn out your retinas so you can't see detail in shadows?  That is what you want.



WAAAAY too hot on these trees.  Not at all natural looking.  It's overwhelming and not flattering to anything in the landscape.  (yes, that's Kitties' bitchy opinion.  Sorry, Arfcommers, if one of you owns this house.  But jeez-o-flip, that's a LOT Of light on those palm trees.  The question is, since it's not particularly beautiful.......why?



Here you have something that's very nice overall.  But notice the two hotspots and how you can't help looking at those?



yeah, those are too bright.   See how the light is so bright it washes out the detail in the foliage? Here the focus should be on the pond with much softer lighting on the surrounding area.  It's important to pick your focal point.  Pick what you want people to see first, then second, etc.  I cannot argue with the hot spots in the waterfall drops.  I don't know that I could do better, and honestly, photos of light are never good indicators of what the real thing looks like.

Editing to add:  This was probably not shot in full darkness, so take what I'm saying on principle only.  Those flowers are awfully "soft blue" to have been photographed either in darkness, or with flash.

ejeviking, Your steps and lovely wall MAY be your focal point.  Or they may not. But either way, those lights in the background of the photo above could be shielded a little, or placed under a bush as a shield, or otherwise redirected so they're not so hot.  Or they could be a different type of fixture that does not blow out the effect of the softer lighting in the pond itself.

Here's one that's really very well done.



See how it "feels" like moonlight, and you can still see into the shadows around the main area?

The trees are a little bright for my taste, but let's get real here. I'm being a picky, armchair lighting b***h, and there are very few "perfect" setups.  I don't know that I could do a lot better than this. Heck, I don't know that I could do THIS well.  

More money and/or more time, might place a few very soft, low fixtures around the perimeter so we could see a foot or three further into the woods.  But that's an artist playing with paint and/or other people's money.  If it's your money, play at will.

I would try to have those trees not be so bright, though, and I would give up a little light on the patio to get that softer look. Sometimes the position of the trees, the structures, and the areas you need to light just don't play well together.   Given all the elements, I think this is, overall, very, very well done.

Let me add (this is an edit cuz I forgot to mention it) See that "uplight" in the windows of the house?  That might or might not be part of the actual landscape lighting.  Maybe it was put there by the magazine (or whoever photographed this). That's probably part of what's making the trees so hot.   There may be another that's been photoshopped out.  So I have no idea whether that was the choice of the homeowner or designer, and it makes a nice photo, but you would not want it in your real life.  With any of these images, it's very hard to tell "chop" from truth.

Now here's one I think is TOO bright.



It's almost so bright that it defeats its purpose.  I could see the house with a LOT less light than that, and I might even see it in better detail, depending on what was done around it, and I would still be able to see more in the shadows around the sides.   Because looking at bright light makes you unable to see what's in the shadows.  

If the point is "Dude, I've got a McMansion floating in an ocean of darkness, LOOK!"  Then okay... this is WAY better than that.
It's not awful at all.  I can still see some stuff in the lawn. BUT I guarantee that if I looked OUT those windows, I would struggle to see whether there was a prowler in the bushes.  Cuz the light would be too bright and pointing up at me.  I'd be looking into it.  Ideally, the lights would be positioned in a gentle wash at the sides of the windows pointing upward at the facade, then it would point downward into the landscaping from above (or just below) where windows are (sort of) so you can not only see the house from OUTSIDE, but you can see what's outside if you're INSIDE.   (usually--there's always a "usually" )

Okay have I muddled this beyond recognition?

In reality, I think this one was done for effect, and the point was the "wow" and the reflection in the pool.




But jeez...for most of us....this is not what you want.  I put it here to illustrate how "too bright" steals the stage and detracts from the whole show.    And people tend to go toward too bright because they think it won't be enough.  They end up with airport runway even with low voltage lighting, because they are scared of "not enough."

Really...it will be enough.  

This is a really good illustration, below.



Most people would be very happy with this.

HOWEVER, if they'd gone with a lower level of light in each fixture, you'd still be able to see all of it, AND you'd be able to see what's in the shadows, too, instead of your eye going from hot spot to hot spot.  OR they could have added some downlighting (softly) from a high tree or the gable of the roof, to sort of "fill" those dark spots.  Either way, it's not a bad effect.

Most people want the ability for OMG LOT OF LIGHT RIGHT EFFING NAO!!!!!.  

Me too.

Put that on a different switch.  

What you want for pleasant effect will also work great for security.  In fact, it'll work BETTER in real life, because you can see what's in the shadows, without being blinded by looking into light.  

There is a lot to be said for being able to blind an intruder (kind of like a flashbang) with  "WE KNOW YOU'RE OUT THERE GET OFF OUR LAWN!!!"  

But...different switch.  When you turn that off, (once your eyes adjust) you should see beautiful.

With a low-voltage system, you can ADD fixtures easily to a run, as long as you have not maxed out that run.

So...my advice is to start with less light than you think you need, and add to it if it's not enough.  It's less expensive that way, too.

The ideal landscape lighting lets you look at it without EVER squinting, even in the brightest light.

@watercat

I saw some other photos of the shed area, and the slope in your back yard (in a thread in DIY).

It's not nearly as sloped as I though it might be.

I think I would still consider checking whether there is adequate drainage by that side of the house, carrying the water AWAY from the foundation.  But I would not imagine that you would need more tiles (even if you need that) unless the area is incredibly poorly drained, and you would know that by now.

Take pics if you can, when you cut that corner down and get some of that dirt out of there.  And let us know how it works when you get some good rains.  I bet the removal of the sniper perch shed, and the removal of any "hump" that's by the driveway, will do what you need.