Beginner Gardening: Plese help me design my backyard., 1 by sevseasail

sevseasail wrote:
So, we moved into this house about 3 month ago and the backyard is what seems to me a blank canvas.
There are plenty of ideas as to what we want to do with it but there's also limitations and things that will probably not be possible.

The yard is about 117 Ft across and 75 Ft deep. There's an entrance on the right side (from the driveway) and also the access through the deck and the patio on the lower level.

The entire perimeter is fenced with an old cedar privacy fence 6 ft tall. We wanted to cover the entire thing with Ivy if possible. As you can see on the picture there are some evergreens on the right side of the yard and the neighbor in the back has some bushes on his side. We plan on keeping all the evergreens as they provide privacy.

The picture that I'm attaching basically lays out what we intend to do with the space. We probably end up adding things to it as we see how the space turns out. I'm talking about more berry plants to attract birds, perhaps an arbor to grow some grapes and some flower beds here and there to add color and attract butterflies and bees, maybe one or another dwarf fruit tree, you get the idea...

We want to use native species and also try to create a balance where everything works together as it does in mother nature; I think they call that permaculture (??)

Any and all advice will be welcome as we do not have any experience on gardening in such a scale. The ideas we put into this plan are based on all the research we have done so far and also on personal taste.
Thank you all for your input !!
Willy.