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?
Wood right next to the house is a big no no. Termites are an issue you want to avoid as much as possible.
Route the downspout away from the house, it looks like it's aimed at your foundation and downgrade so water will want to come back towards the house.
The whole house is wood!
Yes, you can't help that. You can help but spacing any extraneous word at least 3ft from the house is the general rule of thumb.
It is a slab-on-grade garage, and yes I plan on adding a rainwater catchment ASAP. The downspout has been exactly in this position for 12 years when the previous owners built the garage, and has caused no issues -- at least none that came up in inspection. There's very good drainage down to the road behind, I think.
I mean the flex tube pointing into your raised bed, it should point away and closer to the middle where the should be a shallow valley graded away from both. It probably wouldn't come up on inspection, a. Most home inspections aren't that great, b. You'd really need a significant amount of water to be around to judge it proper. Other than that I can't see any real problems with the beds being there or their design or anything.
Termites aren’t an issue everywhere though.
The downspout should be discharged atleast 3 if not 5 feet from the house though. BUT that looks like garage? So slab on grade and not as much as a concern, but still not ideal.
In Colorado they are. And that appears to be their location.
A slab will float almost as well as a bathtub.