Before I can make any suggestions, we really need to know:

- How much sun in the morning?

You see, three hours of sun in the morning, say from 9:00am to
12:00 noon suggests one group of plants, but a couple of hours
of EARLY morning sun, say 7:00am to 9:00am is pretty much the
same as NO sun at all and reduces your possibilities. . .

Carl

So much potential! You could place two tall evergreens one at the left column and another at the middle column for winter interest with an annabell next to the left one. In between the other evergreen and the hydrangea you could plant a large hosta and maybe some salvia in front of the hydrangea if that area gets enough sun. You could also put some foxglove in there if you dont mind replacing it every so often. Azaleas might or might not grow well there depending on the soil wether it is acidic or alkaline. I would do a local research about it. As for lilacs i think that they would require more sun than you could offer it in that area. Other plants that would grow well there are weigela pink puppet (flowers twice after a light pruning), endless summer hydrangea, jacobs ladder, asters, chelone, liatris and hellebores. You could later add some bulbs for spring interest and hydrangeas would cover you from summer till first frost.

The eye always goes to the lightest thing first so a spot of white with an annabell would be good but i wouldn't do more than that. You could use light blues and pinks and you'd be surprised what sparkle a little bit or orange will add.

when the sidewalk is snow covered.. where is all the shoveled snow put????

if it is between the walk and the house.. then you have to take into account.. that you can not have plants there .. that will be harmed by it ... in other words.. there may be a reason that the plot has been left bare ... you might have to go with die to the ground perennials ... rather than things that winter over at height ....

and have you considered some kind of vines up the posts??? .. clematis.. morning glory.. etc ...

do you have that famous OH clay???

ken

Pieris should work in this situation.

I think a white garden would look absolutely beautiful in front of the dark brick of your house. I have a white garden on one side of our house, and selecting/combining plants for it is so much easier than other gardens. I've used some white flowering plants, as well as plants with silver foilage (west-facing, gets a lot of hot late afternoon sun). It's my favorite garden! And the white would show up so well against your dark brick. Just my first thought on seeing your photo.

Thanks so much for the suggestions so far!

There is nothing but a street (and beyond that a parking lot) to the east of us to block sun in the morning, so it gets sun from daybreak until about noon in the summer. Later in the afternoon, the last 12" or so by the sidewalk get another couple of hours of sun (in the original post, you can see that small strip of sunlight).

We get surprisingly little snow. I think I only had to shovel 2 or 3 times this past winter. Light salting usually works just fine. When I do shovel, it goes on the "hellstrip" between the sidewalk and street, not by the house. Some places in our yard do have that awful, hard clay, along with sizable chunks of coal! Fortunately, though, a previous owner was a gardener and amended the soil where she had plants. I don't know the acidity/alkalinity, but it seems to be good, rich dirt. Right now there is pachysandra (at least, that's the best ID I've been able to give it) in front of the porch wall that I just mow over. It keeps coming back, so I guess it doesn't mind too much! At the outside porch corner there is also a small patch of plants about 18" high. They haven't bloomed so I don't know for sure, but the leaves look like iris to me.

I'm honestly scared of putting vines on the house. There was (we think) Virginia creeper in several spots when we bought the house. It was tedious getting it off the brick without causing damage. Here it is the day we closed:

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The creeper doesn't look too bad there, but it was all over the back of the house, too. Even after we pulled it off and uprooted what we could, it still kept coming back. I think it's pretty well under control now, but it's not an experience I want to repeat! We keep the giant bush cut down as short as we can. It's so close to the house we're afraid of digging it up. We're pretty sure it's an overgrown weed, so we're ruthless in cutting it back.

I guess I hadn't thought about taller evergreens at the columns, but that might be something to consider! I wouldn't want to crowd the steps, but they need to be replaced. I don't think I'll be able to find 9' slabs of limestone in my budget, so they could easily be shortened to accommodate that planting. Aren't most bulbs full sun? I might be able to get away with some in that small area that gets sun again in the evening. I wouldn't mind reds and oranges if they were against the white of an Annabelle - I just didn't want it directly against the wall!