The Old Cemetery layout for a Sloped or Terraced

Photorealistic evening photograph of a two-story house set above a terraced front yard with stone retaining walls house on a sloped or terraced, 55 ft of street frontage with a 30 ft front setback, photographed from the public sidewalk at the bottom of the slope looking up the terraced front yard and its steps toward the house above, camera height 5.5 ft. The yard is decorated in a the old cemetery theme. Leaning stones, an iron fence with a gap in it, and candles along a path that nobody has swept in years. The one Halloween theme with nothing alive in it, which is what makes people slow down instead of laugh. Decorations, in position: 1. The star: a small group of gray weathered headstones at three different heights, leaning at slightly different angles, one of them broken off short, 2 ft tall. Lean them. A stone standing straight looks like a sign; a stone tipped four or five degrees looks like the ground moved under it. Vary the angle and vary the depth they sit at. Group them unevenly, with two close together and one apart. Cemeteries are laid out in rows and then two hundred years happen to them, and it is the two hundred years you are building. This one works just as well mirrored to the other side of the walk, so if a tree, a slope or the way you come and go says the far side is better, swap it and swap its partner with it. What matters is that it is beside the path and not standing in it. 2. Sidekick, left: a low run of black fence panels staked along a bed edge, purple and orange light in the rails, the line of it bending rather than straight, 0.9 ft tall. Eight panels, and the run matters more than the count. Set it along the front of the plot rather than around it, so people read a boundary they are looking over instead of a box. Leave one panel out. A continuous fence says the place is maintained. 3. Sidekick, right: five gray foam headstones at slightly different heights and leaning at different angles, mossy and cracked, 1.4 ft tall. Five at 17 in., which is small, and small is right here: these are the stones further back that give the plot depth. Put them BEHIND the big ones and slightly off to one side. Do not line them up with the tall stones. Two sizes at two distances is what makes a lawn look like it goes back further than it does. 4. The step lights: 2 of them, a line of short stakes throwing cold purple light up the edges of a walkway, no cords between them, 1.3 ft tall. Both sides of the steps all the way up, then along the top of each retaining wall. Lighting the wall edges is what makes the tiers visible after dark, and it also stops guests from walking off one. 5. Roofline and porch: 2 of them, a dense run of small orange bulbs following a roofline, warm and slightly sickly rather than festive, 0.2 ft tall. Gutter line and porch. Remember the house already sits above eye level, so the roofline is further up than the ladder you used last year. Shot at dusk with the sky still faintly blue, every lit decoration switched on and brighter than anything else in the frame, warm light spilling onto the lawn. Palette: #8C93A8, #2A2633, #7E8B6A, #E4DCC8. Nothing floats; every piece sits on the ground at the stated distance. Scale reference: the front door is 80 inches tall.