First off, it would be a good start to know where your garden is located, so people could actually give advice on transitional seasonal color effects that work in your zone. Bulbs might be a useful spring burst of color, and spring bulbs that reliably return each spring might rely more on basics such as more reliable daffodils and Muscari, which pretty much work across the country.Removing a portion of the lawn adjacent the existing foundation shrubs and adding a low growing ground cover and bulbs might be a good start. Lower growing spring or summer flowering shrubs could also be added as a foreground framing the existing shrubs at the house. Personally I think it would be more interesting to add a few larger growing mounding low perennials or arching flowering shrubs with ground cover out at the mailbox, rather than a bed of all one type of annuals, something like dwarf Spiraea or Weigelia or similar. If you did want annuals in that spot, something taller and lacier such as Cosmos or Cleome or Nicotiana would look good there. There are also plenty of useful summer flowering shrubs such as Hibiscus syriacus or Philadelphus, or spring flowering herbaceous perennials such as Paeonies or Oriental poppies that could be used for seasonal color. Perennial asters and chrysanthemums are classic fall color effects, along with shrubs that give fall color. As to tree placement, it would make more sense to look at tree locations based on views from the house as well as from the street. Framing the house at each side and again at the street seems very static and may not frame or screen views from the house or elsewhere in the front garden, nor give shade where it makes the most sense. Not enough information given to really help with tree placement, and in my opinion tree locations, sizes and types should be based on much more than just this one street view of the house. If you have a good local or regional botanical garden near you, they are almost always a good venue to get ideas of plant/tree choices for different seasons that actually work. Photoshopped photos may be a starting point to help you visualize possibilities, but aren't as good as seeing the real thing to know how it will actually look. I also notice that Yard's revised foundation planting scheme that emphasizes formal symmetry centered on the 3 front windows has inadvertently planted up your entry walk; something you won't likely want to do...

I have some love/hate groundcovers myself. I think the biggest criteria for my love/hate ratio is the combination of how it grows (fast/slow) and where it is located. i.e. not all fast growers are hated if they are in the right place I just pulled out about 100 sq ft of pachasandra because it just got everywhere. I will miss it in the winter. (pre-snowcover). I have a huge patch of bunchberry (Cornus canadensis) that spreads very quickly, but it is in a part-shade woody tree-shrub area and it really seems to fit the woodland less-manicured feel. I also suspect it would be hard to eradicate if I wanted to. It has those thin roots that go everwhere and break easily. But I love it where it is. I have creeping veronica Waterperry in a perennial bed and it stays put nicely. Love it. I also have Georgia Blue but it is much more aggressive. I have to pull it back severely twice a year. Dislike it (but not enough to remove it). I have a gold variegated one that barely grows. I moved it this year to a new place it may do better. Lamium 'Pink Nancy' wanders and blends in nicely. It pulls out easily if it wanders too far. Love it. Ajuga, love it in bloom (have Choc Chip and Crispa Metallica). Neutral otherwise. Need to have something interesting (and strong) nearby. I'm trying out Hosta Kabitan. Thymes... love the daintiness... hate that they don't suppress weeds so well. Geranium Biokova... I consider that more as a specimen perennial than a groundcover, but I can see it is somewhat of both. Love it. Sedge, Treasure Island...grows slowly, love it because it can go anywhere safely, but unless it is cut back with other perennials, it looks messy far into spring until the new growth covers the old stuff. Cutting back a groundcover is not a fun thing. I used to when I had a little, but now its out of the question. I enjoyed and saved this old thread about groundcovers in link below. I haven't read it in a while, but it might be interesting after reading this thread.

The show that I really like is Bang For Your Buck. On BFYB the camera takes its time and actually shows whole rooms and details with a well-photographed and easy eye. No jarring editing. No dumb "reveal." The owners explain why they remodeled as they did, how and why they made their decisions, what worked and what didn't, etc. Then the designers come in and critique the rooms. Of course, they're supposed to find something wrong, so they always do, even if it's silly. But you actually have a serious discussion of a room by two separate parties. I don't actually care much who got the biggest "bang", but I've gotten a lot of decorating ideas. Love HouseHunters just for choosing the house I like best and guessing which was the one chosen. Some of the stories on HH are very moving. Unless, of course, it's some 20-something whippersnapper who whines about granite or looks at a perfectly usable bathroom and says "dated". In that case, like some other posters here, I yell at him/her to go live in a village in Afghanistan or Iran, where the toilets are literally a hole in the floor (or the ground). Sometimes we don't realize how great our lives are! As an English teacher and cranky grammar-nanny, I do blame HGTV for its cruel assault on our beautiful language. However, I'll spare the forum my lecture. :o)

this is new jersey, as in northeast coast US near new York. I'm doing work at someone's house. Their goal initially was to just have a no-mow no water or fertilizer lawn. Then I or they pointed out how some of these no mow/water/fertilizer covers can be flowering type things instead of just grass and they liked that idea better. So we set out to find something like that online in seeds or plugs but I didn't really find anything at first. I just recently found a lot of those things are on ebay cheap seeds and should be started indoors over winter and planted in spring instead of planted now in Fall like grass seeds. At first, we kind of scrapped the idea of a flowering cover because they wanted to do the whole lawn with it but don't want it to spread to the neighbors' lawn especially underground and popping up. So we decided to just do a no-mow type lawn like Pearls Premium http://www.pearlspremium.com/ But considering the cost of the no-mow lawn seeds and not using chemical starter fertilizer or crabgrass preventers, it's a gamble to try and plant and hope it doesn't just turn to crabgrass. I have organic fertilizer but it's no where near high in phosphorus to develop good roots quickly like regular starter fertilizer, Organic starter fertilizer I can only find online believe it or not. Instead of doing the whole yard with something like Pearls Premium, It would probably cost them less for me to just till large landscape beds throughout the property and then get seeds off ebay of things like flowering ground cover (that doesn't spread underground like crazy) and things like creeping juniper etc. I'm open for suggestions on thing like this. Once these things are established, they need zero water and zero mowing and maybe a sprinkle of organic fertilizer every few years. They will need a pruning every few years but that's like an hour of work maybe. At the beginning, yes the newly planted landscape beds will have to be de-weeded well until the plants establish and thicken it up. We're leaving about a 8 foot border space from the property line that will just remain how it is now which is basically weeds with some turf grass mixed in. A no-mow lawn still needs to be cut maybe 3 times a year, so these 10' borders will have to be mowed anyway if they're left how they are or if regular grass or no-mow grass is planted there. Once the landscape beds are thriving, they can decide to plant regular or no-mow grass in the border areas. I can do that now since it's the right time instead of waiting until next Fall but we want to see how the landscape beds go first. I can probably just scalp mow the weedy border areas and that will really retard growth there so that omits the whole having to plant grass there but the yard will still look nice because of the landscape beds. Get the idea now? It's about making a nice yard with minimal mowing, watering, fertilizing, and the cost is very low thanks to ebay seeds. perennial ground cover flowering: http://www.pbcgov.com/newsroom/1211/_images/ground_covers_tibouchina.jpg http://img.diynetwork.com/DIY/2014/03/07/CI-Stepables_Groundcover-wooly-thyme_h_lg.jpg creeping juniper: http://s45.photobucket.com/user/mishmosh2000/media/misc/Oot_Picture-7.jpg.html etc