The original owners started it with the plan and the deck, but I doubt they'd have let it get so wild! When we bought it, the plantings were fairly new and short and carefully pruned, and they had bolted kitschy tchotchkes all over the wood and brick fences.

Luckily the plantings are set out in a way that when I ignore them, except to hack a pathway through and shorten the hedge against the house when it starts scraping on the windows in a creepy manner in the middle of the night, they produce separate areas, which is what I like about overgrown cottage gardens and Japanese gardens--you're constantly wandering around and finding new spaces.