Which direction does the house face?

I see a bit of a tree on the left side of the first photo. Where is that tree? It would be helpful to see a photo of the entire house and front yard, preferable facing the house head-on rather than at an angle so we could see that tree (and anything else we're missing). It would also be helpful to see how your yard interacts with the landscaping in the adjacent properties.

I like the hanging planters. What is growing in them? Do you anticipate using the same flower color (I can't see if it's pink or lavender) in the flowering plants you want to add?

The hanging baskets are lavendar petunia's. We favor the softer, pastel colors but I did see some red knockouts that were pretty.

I need to charge my battery so I can get a pic head on. The sun was preventing me from taking that shot this morning. The two beds that I have a close up shot are all that is to be seen. The side yard only has a 3ft straw border next to the house, no shrubs or flowers yet.

Here are two other pics that should help a little as to where the maple is located in our front yard. If you look out the window on the right side (facing) of the house you will look right at hit. It also shows our neighbors house. He has similar shrubs and a couple camelia's in his front yard.

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I will also add that we would prefer to plant a flowering shrub or perennial.

No suggestions, just wanted to say I love your house, and the hanging planters! the pics are beautiful!!

Angie

Your home and yard have a very neat, contained look, so be careful when adding elements that you don't add plants that won't behave or have a natural growth structure that is very loose and haphazard. You'll just end up feeling like it makes everything look messy. You might even investigate a formal garden look.

While many (including me) like the look of crazy-growth plantings (which look great in the right location), I think you'll want to stick with shrubs, annuals, and perennials that stick to a mounded shape or are amenable to being clipped or sheared. In addition, I think you'll want to avoid aggressive spreaders.

So, what to plant. Having said all the above, I think you could put one riotous climbing rose that will climb onto the porch.

Azaleas will be nice, (but choose varieties whose natural shape you like and do not shear them.) You could also try old-fashioned hydrangeas to add to a formal look.

You can add tidy annuals like impatiens into your beds.

I'd avoid lilies because they do look very messy when the blooms fade, but the knock-out roses you mentioned could be a great addition. You could add some speedwell perhaps for shoots of color. Maybe even some old-fashioned peonies, or the very lovely tree peony.

Have fun and try googling "formal garden" for some ideas.

Thanks for all the suggestions! I'll do some research and report back with pics when everything is planted.

What about adding some shrubs with yellow or purple foliage.?
ALso I think you need some height at the right front corner of the house..
Red would be a great accent color, eithe annuals. maybe red rose bush... you could create a "bean shaped" island with the maple in it at one of the ends..
Great house..!
Lynn

I don't think that a climbing rose and hydrangea would be happy in the same bed - their requirements for sun are completely different. Based on the existing plants I'd guess that you get quite a bit of sun. What is the exposure?

The front lawn looks large enough to support a shade tree - have you considered one?

Our house faces the west so we get a lot of afternoon sun. The front yard is average size for our area even though our lot is almost an acre. Our back yard is rather large and another story! ha ha

My wife loves Hydrangeas so we're thinking about planting them down the side you can see in the pics. Our neighbor has planted azaleas and hydrangeas down their side and they're doing pretty good.

I do like the idea of the bean shaped island even though I see that a lot in our neighborhood. Adding a few red knockouts out there may work.

About the shade tree...I'm not sure if we have the room. The maple is supposed to grow to 15-25ft so that may be a little too much up front.

What I would really like to do is transplant all the hawthorne's to the rear and plant either knockouts or encore azalea's in their place. I would also like to add two of whatever I plant on the right side in front of the ligustrums. I'm not sure if this would look okay or be too much. I've been cutting back the ligustrum but I guess I could let them get a little taller depending on what I plant. I would like to keep with the same size, 2-3ft since I like the natural shape of shrubs.

We started with a bunch of dirt a couple years ago but we're getting there..here is my nightmare of a back yard, It goes back over 240ft. We did add some Crape Myrtles down both sides and will be redoing all the beds in a couple weeks in preparation of our privacy screen, chindo viburnums, that are supposed to "play nicely" with the myrtles.

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WOW you could chalk it and have a football field!!
It's really a blank canvas. Do you have any idea of what you want back there?
I would suggest you call in a garden designer - you'll save money in the long run because a designer will (should) select plants that will thrive for you.

I too love Hydrangeas. They do best with morning sun and shade in the afternoon. You need to locate them near a water source because as their name implies they are thirsty plants.
You might want to consider flower carpet roses as opposed to Knock Outs because the K.Os will be too large around the maple.

Well, we actually hired a designer last year right after we planted the Crape Myrtles. We did some planting around the back that died and we wanted a plan to go by since we don't have the money to do it at one time.

We only had the back yard designed since the front yard had "something" just to get us by. I know I should focus our money and efforts to our back yard but I figured a few bushes won't break the bank and will liven the front yard up a bit.

Here is the designers idea of our backyard. She asked what we wanted and tried to use existing plant material. When our house was finished no one had a fence around us and couldn't afford to fence it all in. Now, everyone has a fence so we had it moved to the back of our lot. The design is only for the "original" back yard. I think we're going to leave the rest natural this year and maybe I'll work on cleaning it up a little more and plant some seed.

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We have a well just for our irrigation so water shouldn't be an issue. I have to move some heads since we're going to extend the bed from our fence out to the tree's and then I'm going to tap into the heads and run drip for the new shrubs. I know this isn't the proper way but it should work for us.

Thanks for the plug on the carpet roses. I know very little about roses and these look great.

Looks lovely

Just a note -- your tree appears to be very badly mulched. It's very important to the health of the tree that the area where the trunk flares out to the roots be exposed. There should be no mulch covering that area.

A couple inches away from the trunk you should have the mulch 1 - 2 inches deep, no deeper. You can, however, extend the mulched area out further, as far as the branches extend, and that will be beneficial. Spread it evenly, not heaped in a mound. See http://www.treesaregood.com/treecare/mulching.aspx

Don't emulate the harmful mulching that many landscaping companies do.