A local garden store or designer will certainly be able to help you. In the meantime, you can look up ideas online, but you'll need to know some basic information before anyone can help you choose specific plants. The first and most important is to know your planting zone, which is all about your location and climate. You also need to know the directional orientation of your house and the wall, and whether it is "full sun", "partial sun", or "shade". Will you be planting on both sides of the wall? You may wind up with vastly different plants if one side gets full sun and the other is in the shade. Take into consideration whatever shade is cast by the large tree, and the house itself. If you have the time, spend a day taking pictures of both sides of the wall - maybe once an hour (shadows will shift somewhat throughout the season), so you may want to do this every few weeks and keep a visual log of how the shadows move. Also, before you plant, decide if you want to paint the wall. It will be easier to paint before you plant, of course. White will reflect heat back onto plants. Climbing plants would look nice on the wall, if you're not going with a very structured garden. Ivy is an obvious choice, but there are other vines that flower beautifully, if you like that idea.

The fence will end up being a modern picket fence, We aren't sure if we should grass the two squares or plant it out, it's a nice sunny spot, but we have nosey neighbours that we are trying to make disappear, if then it becomes more private then a seated area could be really nice, Hopefully the right plants will work or we will have to go with plan B, of installing barbed wire and two wild Dobermans!

Thanks for the replies! My wife suggested we talk to a local real estate agent, so i think that is a good idea... just that Im not sure how helpful they are likely to be if we arent selling yet :) As for saving for our dream house, I dont disagree, however if doing this up nicely over the next ~5 years or so while we live here nets us some extra in the eventual sale, then that of course will help us as well. Interesting thing happened today actually. I got a knock on the door and one of the older neighbours asked if he could take some lemons from the tree. I of course said yes. Anyway he was telling me he had lived in the street for 40 years. I asked him if the house had always looked like this, and he said no that ~30 years ago the old old owner did a massive renovation and pulled off the timber and put up the bricks and gutted the inside of the house. Interesting stuff!

A very simple layout keeping the floor space within the kitchen, the WIP takes up a lot of space with not much gain, The broom cupboard could be moved to the Laundry/entrance, narrow. If the wall has been bumped out to the eaves on the deck side giving an extra 300 depth to the kitchen you could make the island 2700 x 1200 and all drawers. The wall of narrow pantry will hold all pantry needs and more, no deep cupboards to dig into. cheers