Oregon Grape. Mahonia Mike

Once again, a trip to a good local nursery should provide you with many choices, specially at this time of year when many of these places feature fall planting sales. You could consider a collection of dwarf conifers, which offer a wide array of shapes, sizes and foliage color. Broadleaf evergreens I particularly value for extremely low maintenance and all around good looks are Viburnum tinus 'Spring Bouquet', 'Newport Dwarf' escallonia, various nandinas, Cotoneaster glaucophylla, Euonymus japonicus var. microphylla (boxleaf euonymus - assorted variegated forms to chose from) and hebes, but there are scores of others. And there are many deciduous shrubs that offer stunning fall color or late season blooms. Most of these will not offer too much interest during winter but twig dogwoods are standouts and oakleaf hydrangeas generally hold their richly colored fall foliage well into winter.

https://homeguides.sfgate.com/landscape-italian-cypress-43140.html Plant Italian cypress trees instead of installing a privacy fence. The plants can be planted as close as 2 to 3 feet apart to form a privacy barrier. They don’t take up much more space than a wooden fence and make a much more attractive natural barrier.

In retrospect, that might be a Saucer Magnolia instead of a Tulip Poplar: https://www.thespruce.com/magnolia-trees-saucer-magnolias-2132135 It was here when I bought the house about 20 years ago, and the previous owners CALLED it a Tulip Poplar. But now I remember that we talked about it on here before, and I'm pretty sure that the conclusion was that it's a Magnolia. I took this picture yesterday (Sept 21) at around 4pm, with me facing North: I recently had a bunch of wild trees removed that were blocking sun on the Western side of the house (left of the picture), so the tulip tree that you see on the left was growing weird and is just now starting to fill out properly. It's really way too close to the house, and I have to trim limbs back every year to keep them off of the roof. But it balances a dogwood on the Eastern side of the house. This is a closer picture of beneath the tree: I measured, the distance from the downspout to the tree trunk is 5 1/2 feet. It's hard to tell from the picture, but the tree-to-house line is a 90 degree angle to the foundation. While I was measuring, I checked; from the ground to the window sill on the window on the right in the picture is 40". There were a bunch of Heavenly Bamboo shrubs in this area when I bought the place, and last year I relocated all of them to open things up. You can see that I half-heartedly put in some plants with no real design in mind, I just followed the path that I created with mondo grass, coral bells, and hostas. Now I'm thinking more along the lines of an evergreen shrub (maybe more than one) to sort of block the water spigot, hose reel, and sprinkler system that is there but you can't really see in the picture. Then I could move the hostas and coral bells to group together in front of that shrub, then layer outward into the sunnier area with flowers and sedum.