i'd probably start by designing a top view of the garden in photoshop, just some quick lines to mark out where the garden beds, driveway, footpaths etc.. are. (you could place a plane under the house model and start with a render from the top view as a guide.)
put that on a plane in the max scene and start modelling the elevations into another plane by using soft selections and moving points up and down. Then add bushes and garden beds etc... maybe decide on a few camera angles for the scene early so you don't waste time modelling things that wont be seen.

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Also, I thought I'd mention that for creating "lawn" type grass in vray it is often effective to use
vray displacement with a noise map to get some short cut grass that tiles seemlessly and breaks up shadows better than just using a bump map. Good for middle distance lawn and you could add some scatter or vray fur for any closeup sections.

I made a quick example image.

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a toast to Tyson, the helper of us 3d noobs!
we'd be lost without you man

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Cogito, Ergo Sum

cheers man, thats a nice thing to say . I noticed that the Viz masters architectural materials collection has this "vray grass shader" and wanted to point out that you can do it exactly the same without the plugin, although the plugin material does have some fancy sliders that make it easy to tweak.

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yah..thanks man....thanks tyson....you're a big help..to us..specially to a newbie like me.....thanks again

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i wish i can do that too......
i need more practice....

3 thanks in ahz's post above! no but seriously you and the other guys on this forum are a great help! DAF ftw!

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Cogito, Ergo Sum