Can you post a picture? Also info about your zone, how much sun the area gets, etc.

Nice work on bed preparation, lucky plants! But which plants...? Obviously many different opinions here, and it sounds like we've succeeded in confusing you! I guess you will have picked up on the fact that a start-from-scratch landscape design would probably not put a bed right in that spot; some would put a strip of plantings out at the sidewalk, or specimen shrubs spaced in the lawn. Others would garden up the whole area. But you have good reasons for wanting to plant there, at least for this year. I actually pretty much agree that you should put annuals in for this year. It will give you something to look at, to think about, to react to, and will give you some experience with taking care of plants if you don't have much of that. For longer term planning, the variables that should factor into your decision are (a) the look you want: whether you want colour or just green, tidy or exuberant, or a mixture, (b) how much you're willing to spend, (c) what you want to see in winter, and (d) what kind of maintenance do you want to be doing? ALL planting installations require some work at some time. Annuals require annual replacement, and a little in-season snipping and weeding, and then fall clean-up. Perennials require basically the same in-season and fall care as annuals but because they grow more slowly, won't cover the ground as fast and will give you more weeding to do the first couple of years. Once they grow big enough, of course they continue to grow until they are too big, and need division. Both of these choices will leave your bed bare in winter, but in season they can give you the colour you're thinking about. When you get into shrubby stuff, as you were originally thinking, then you're talking pruning in such a small space, unless you get something like the fastigiate varieties of yew which will make a row of very narrow evergreen columns. Deciduous usually equals a fairly messy look; evergreen is usually tidy but not much change over the year. If it were me, I would get a few dwarf or fastigiate evergreen shrubs, planted in little groupings, and dress them up for seasonal show with some annuals or perennials. But it'll take some experience to know how plants will perform there, for example whether they crawl on the grass in pursuit of light or stay nicely in their places. So I foresee some trial and error in your future! For more specific ideas, you could go to the forums of the type of plants you want, eg conifers or rhododendrons or hostas or perennials, and describe the light conditions more thoroughly and ask for suggestions. Or to your local nursery. KarinL

Back off and take your time to identify your plants. Then start moving the ones you want to keep to an area that you have set aside for your flower beds. You probably have some treasures that people would drive miles for. You and people with a similar mind set are one of the reasons my hubby has instructions to call my friends for a massive digging party shortly after he plants me in the ground. I have seen too many people buy a property for the plants and then rip out everything and plant grass. I have like you probably have and do not know it many very expensive plants. I am not diss'ing you but you have a ground cover that should be easy to maintain but it is not what you want. So you want to put something in that your do have to work on. Wait and see until the flowers bloom to see if you like them. Ask your neighbors if they know what the plants are and would they like them. This is a way to meet your neighbors and perhaps get rid of what you consider trash.

It's the case that your front yard will never look nice if you don't get the lawn (grass or groundcover) into good shape. It's the largest "plant(s)" and having it be scarred up destroys the look of anything else that might look nice. I agree with Laceyvail's comments about how the walk approaches the house. It should be farther from the house, approaching it from the front, giving more depth to the bed that is left of the stoop. Many times people don't like to change such things because it costs $$, so it's mentioned in case you are willing to correct a condition in spite of cost, or in case you're faced with designing a walk for the next house, or for others who find this thread and wish to learn about avoiding mistakes. I actually don't mind an "S" curve shape to the walk. If we were starting from scratch, I probably would have made that curve stronger, allowing more depth in the bed near corner of the house, and placed the small tree on that side of the walk. But now we're dealing with what is. Here's a basic configuration in regard to arrangement of elements. Keep in mind that I cannot really see how much shade the tree produces. Where you place groundcover vs. grass will depend on where light exists. If you have no real light to speak of, it may be the case that your entire front yard would be better off being groundcover than grass. If you have light, you can have grass. Also, the tree is large and even though I can't see it, I see low hanging branches. I'm sure you could stand to (need to) remove lower limbs and branches which would have the effect of letting more light below which would help plants at the ground prosper. Color is used to differentiate one object from the next ... not as a suggestion of what color you should have things be. (The small, multi-trunk trees would be made from large shrubs.)