Having never owned a house or really had a yard of my own, I got pretty excited and decided to do some ad-hoc landscaping. Built some raised beds for vegetables, and just laying in some organic shaped in-ground beds for low water decorative plants. Gonna fill the rest in with gravel. Any pointers?
Another option to consider is a native plant growncover! It'll be low maintenance and won't require mowing.
Some of the no-mow native ground covers, like frogfruit if you're in the southern US, actually get quite tall. We had a very wet spring and my frogfruit lawn got over twelve inches tall before I gave in and mowed it on the highest setting on my mower. I do have the same plant as filler in several beds, though, where it can get as tall as it wants.
The frogfruit would have eventually laid down a bit shorter once the extra moisture dried up, but it was getting to be quite the eye sore.