Trench Digging in a Circle is Hard!

Shady Side Yard New Collage

I'm trying to make my collages closer to the real thing now as we  get closer to the possibility of installing  some  (stress SOME) of this landscaping.

This is the current side yard sorry state.

This is sort of in perspective.

It's just impossible to  represent the landscape using this method and maintain correct perspective. For instance the back fence in the collage below is shorter than in the photograph. However, I see now that the house doesn't even look the same so I distorted it or didn't use that picture?

The weeping willow, sigh... I've gone back and forth trying to decide if that's a good or bad idea. If I was to put one anywhere that's the most logical spot. It's the lowest point of our yard and the neighbor has had trouble with water in his basement.  I suspect the water drains from our yard or did before. We have re-graded it and before the entire backyard sloped toward him. Good for our water level bad for his. Now I notice we have standing water where the pool was last year. It doesn't help that the grading was done for the ground but we haven't added back the gravel, patio, pool, etc. that will bring that back up. However, I think there is still going to be some water heading toward that corner so what better than a willow to soak it up. But I'll have to prune it every year to keep it fairly manageable. My understanding is they grow fast.

So there's the meandering dry stream bed. I would rather have more uniform sets of plants in groups so it'll be neater still not so random. Since repetition would be soothing. Hopefully I can start to put this in after we get the pool back in. If I get too carried away it'll be trampled by the frontloader.