Before you do anything, live in the house for at least a full year
Take a photo of the backyard every week from the same spot around an hour after sunrise, noon & an hour before sunset to get a proper feel for the amount of sunshine.
Get a diary & log the rain , wind , first frost, last frost and ditto for snow if any.
Note where water pools in torential rain and where it flows
Check for boggy ground after heavy rain and map it out ( Google earth photos are good for this ) .
A landscaper will not know any of these things but needs to in order to create an environment that will work & not kill you trying to maintain it .
My workshop is on the rural fringe of Oz's biggest city and could not count the number of people who have bought into the area , spent a fortune on landscaping only to see it wash away, dry out & die or have their mowers bog axel deep in boggy soil.
One in particular spent a fortune on a pool & tennis court , got the mower bogged, then got the car bogged trying to pull the mower out then had the tow truck rupture all of the pool plumbing recovering the other vehicles .
He then spent over $ 100,000 sorting out the yard, putting in a pebble bed drain ( with fish ponds ) to correct the drainage of the water diverted by the pool , paving , sub soil drainage & then returfing .
ANother customer bought a drop in fiberglass pool only to see it pop back out of the ground a month after the heaviest recorded rain in the area .