Should I hire a professional?

Crepe myrtles are pretty but be careful planting near your house or near driveways where cars are parked because the flowers leaves stains. Belle

If I were you and your husband, I would forget all the plants you want to grow in your garden for now anyway, you really are jumping from one thing to another and doing so, you will waste more dollars than you can save doing it properly. The best way for you to create a plan for ALL the hard landscaping you want, is to use the pictures of the house you already have, get each view, back, front, side garden areas enlarged to large size, task this to a board and cover it with tracing greaseproof (Baking) get this secured, then start to draw fee hand shapes for beds, curves or straight lines for drives / walkways etc, draw patios and any hard wooden or concrete structures you want, all this is called the bedrock of a garden or hard landscaping, while you play about on your paper, you should writ a list of what each structure is, what materials it needs to build it and can you do it yourself, then go get costs from professionals to let you know a ballpark figure to either work for or save to wards.
Next step is to draw beds marking what plants you want, a tree on paper is just a circle (remember they grow) tall plants like Bamboos is a serious of strokes with the odd leaf showing, mark these onto your planting list, adding the colour, hight etc so that when you ask a landscaper to come and give you a cost, then he can see exactly the garden you want and NOT the plantings that earn him the most profit, plus some will want to give you plants that everyone else is happy with, remember YOU WANT THE GARDEN TO SUITE YOU NEEDS NOT THE LANDSCAPER. Things you have to remember is who looks after the garden, how much time can they devote to the care, watering, weeding, etc. Once you are happy with your rough plans and you have tweaked them to death, ha, ha, ha, you can concentrate on ONE section at a time, like the patio and seating area, after you've spent your last dollar on that, you start to save up for the next project on your plan. I have to tell you there is a saying that Rome was never built in a day, and gardens were never made in a couple of weeks / months or you will make every mistake imaginable. your neighbour is right, she has her garden for years, I have been gardening my place 25 years and it still is not finished, thinks die off, things outgrow their area and shade out too many nice plants so it needs moved, every spring I have new bulbs, the pathways need repaired, fencing need painting, so Gardening is a lifelong project and is enjoyed more if you do one bit at a time and learn what you did to make it look right.
I'd go to the book store or library and pick up some landscape books, planting beds and general flower gardening and you can pick out little bits of the beds on show, what grows best beside what etc.
don't be in too much a rush or you will put yourself off and your husband will be having fit's each time you buy a load of plants and nowhere to plant them, don't have plants sitting in pots from one year to the next, I'd rather give them away than watch then die by lack of care, just take your time and enjoy the whole project, it's a lifetimes work really, you see those gardening shows on TV where they do a garden is 2 days, well for Gods sake, don't let them near mine, no garden can be made that quick, you never see those gardens 5 years later.
have a great time planning, go get a box of kids crayons for drawing your planting beds etc, and most of all, don't get stressed about Roses or trees right now, being in the garden is relaxing not the onslaught of a breakdown.
Good luck. WeeNel.

Thank you all for the encouragement! And, WeeNel, thank you for the reminder. I've always wanted this to be my adventure of a lifetime, AND I've always known that I've wanted a garden and not just landscaping.

About that landscape fabric; I decided to have it put in because the majority of my time is spent on my children's education and extra-curricular activities leaving only my weekends for weeding--last summer I was out there about 4 - 7 hours per week weeding. My oldest will be leaving the nest in two years and I'll have just the one at home to school, so I know I'll have a lot more time on my hands soon. I'm planning a lawn surrounded by mixed borders on the west side of the house and all those beds won't have landscape fabric. I think the price I'm getting it for is $250 for 100 yards...I'd really rather spend money on my plants, but for the beds right up in front of the house I think it is worth it to keep the weeds at bay.

My husband has approved the expenditure! Hooray! I'll be calling the landscaper tomorrow!

Well done Dmileski, you will get some pleasure from your beds this year now you know what way you want to go, just take your time, be sure you can grow the plants in your area, and look them up for what conditions they like, things like shade, damp soil or baked in sun all matter to healthy plants and save you money in the end, keep a gardening diary to look back on when the next season begins, and what grew well or never developed at all, it's fun to re-read in the years to come too. Happy gardening and let us all know how you get on. WeeNel.

Landscaping fabrics are good for shallow planting as long as you have thick planting dirt ,soil or mulch. If you are planting something requiring deeper holes then you will be frustrated. I hardly weed because we spread 6 cubic yard of new mulch every year on top of my compost. this is talking through experience. Belle

Glad you mentioned all this Bellieg, I use the woven fabric on a lot of my shrub beds and it is a God send for me, I couldn't look after my large garden without some of this material, BUT as you have said, you still either have to weed, even in the mulch, or add more mulch each year to stop the weeds forming into strong plants, but the mulch looks far nicer than large clumps of earth that has hundreds of weeds growing. This type of woven fabric allows water /feeds to penetrate the soil, helps hold in well needed moisture and on a large garden area, saves watering problems too.
Good luck and Happy gardening.

I wanted to include some "after" pictures. I am sleeping well lately. The whole experience with the professional landscaper was a positive one. I have learned that I will not be using a professional landscaper in the future. The beds were trenched, the holes dug, Round-up sprayed all over the grass and weeds in the beds (!), the shrubs and trees planted, the cloth laid and then everything was covered over with pine straw.

I would have dug everything out, amended the soil and then planted everything. One of the beds had gravel in it, he didn't remove the gravel, just dug the holes and sprayed, planted and covered everything over--ack! I try not to think about this part because I'll be sleepless again until I remove that fabric and get all the rocks out from under it.

However, with the front beds done I can start planning and planting something pretty in the backyard.

I got one magnolia, Little Jem; 3 crepe myrtles, and one Japanese maple, two gardenias, and six laurel petulum and two pencil like shrubs flanking the front door.

That is a start and now just add some annuals and perinnials. Belle

Well, that's great! It will all fill out and look very pretty. Isn't it amazing what some contractors will do? Oh well, the gravel won't harm the shrubs, just pull out the gravel someday and amend it. It'll be fine. But, now that you know that the "professionals" aren't always infallible either, go ahead and dig in! Keep posting the pictures, looking forward to seeing your createions.

That pine straw looks attractive in your photo and I am wondering if that is a southern thing. I have never seen it used in the PNW, only bark or compost. What's the story on pine straw? Is it pine needles? Dried? Whole needles? Any particular pine tree used?

Way to go DMileski! You have begun the adventure of a lifetime (and, as WeeNel says, creating a garden IS a lifetime's work).

patti47, yes, pine straw is a Southern thing. I live in so. GA, where they grow pine trees as a crop (for pulpwood). The dropped needles are harvested mostly in fall, and baled like straw; they are pretty high-dollar, too. But they do make an excellent mulch; light, airy, yet thick enough to deter weeds, and doesn't float away in the rain. I'm lucky enough to have pine trees in my yard and can rake my own pinestraw on to my flowerbeds (although the cones and dropped branches are sort of a p.i.a.).