Backyard makeover contest Week 2: Blank slate

We've been here for five years and really don't use our backyard. We'd like to have a patio to put our outdoor furniture on, but just don't know what we want and haven't had the funds to try to figure it out. Our neighbors both have beautiful patios and porches ... and all we have is the 6-by-10-foot porch that the house came with, and under it is a patch of poorly growing grass and dirt! It's just plain ugly.

We would LOVE to be able to eat outside and enjoy the view from our backyard. We are open to just about anything! We'd love to have a backyard we can enjoy and to be able to have people over to enjoy our backyard as well.

Thanks for considering us!

What the Lurvey Garden Center experts recommend, with a budget of $10,000:

Because this backyard essentially is a clean slate, a new patio, furniture and landscaping will offer a wonderful retreat. Patio furniture from Oxford Garden would complement a new a paver patio with raised seating wall. A mixed landscape planting of trees, shrubs, perennials, roses and ornamental grasses would provide shade while creating an outdoor retreat, and the planting beds would be finished with shredded mulch. Landscape lighting and garden art complete the transformation.

From May 6 through June 3, the Daily Herald will publish finalists in our Get Your Summer On backyard makeover contest. Two winners will be chosen and they will receive prize packages valued at about $15,000. Winners will be featured in Home & Garden on June 10. To see more backyard makeover ideas, special Web page at www.dailyherald.com/entlife/homegarden/summer.