Wow. Those hedges were like...furry caterpiller eyebrows! To me you have a Ranch home. It's only vaguely reminiscent of the great Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie style with the deep overhang and brick. Closer to the Usonian style, the simpler "for the masses" design. You can either "go with the flow", or try to turn it into a fluffy pig's ear. A Ranch has strong horizontal lines. Vertical materials (not the plants) have to be substantial and STRAIGHT-EDGED. It isn't a Craftsman, which is closer to Robert Adam than Frank Lloyd Wright. I love FLW so I would continue his design ethos. The best distillation of Wright's design genius is applicable to your situation and can be found in this superb post from Architectoid, linked below. The misspellings are the author's fault, not mine, LOL - to begin with, it's USONIAN, not Unisonian style! Nonetheless, the 32 guidelines are precise, just as Wright's architecture is. Also, in the West, shade is not an indicator of a low UV index. "Shade" in the East Coast is not "shade" in AZ, UT, NM, NV, and CA. We can often grow full-sun plants with a couple of hours of sun and bright shade the rest of the day. Much as I love roses, they are antithetical to a ranch. The strong lines and beautiful xeric plantings that bahia (David Feix in San Jose, CA, who posts some amazing photos here) are much better suited to a horizontal architectural design. Think phormiums and senecio or kalanchoe (disclaimer: I don't know if these work in your zone) - e.g., structural instead of cottage-y. I now apologize profusely to the owners of these photos, which came from Google Images: This is FLW's Robie House: This scale model of Robie House shows the overall proportions: This FLW Prairie House shows the massive vertical elements needed to balance the horizontals he used: Now for some landscaping. Note how the overall effect is low and away from the house. The thin redwood holding up this porch overhang is quite odd for a FLW. I'm wondering if that's original or was a replacement: A really beautiful landscaping job, in proportion to the house: Now...your house. Forgive my very bad pseudo-Photoshop skills. My drawing program is really old and couldn't duplicate your brick color/texture. The biggest issue is your door and porch are off-balance to one another. Ideally your door would be substantially wider and centered with the porch entrance. But that means moving a window - which can be expensive! In this, the new solid walls are similar brick to the house, capped with concrete (one of FLW's loves). The new porch columns are boxed to give a massive look and stained the color of redwood or a dark brown, whichever looks better. You now have a wide enclosed front patio that gives depth to the house (which it needs) and entertaining/lounging space for you. A wider walkway of concrete squares gives a clear entrance and easy access. I don't have a plant design program so I'm envisioning the following low and medium-height plantings: - low plants on the right between driveway and house - plantings on the left start low near the path and go to medium-height as the sightline to the edge of the house starts to align on the diagonal. Here is a link that might be useful: Wright's 32 design basics

My favorite groundcover rose is snow carpet, which is NOT part of the "Flower Carpet" roses. It doesn't seem to be available at many places, I saw that Niche Gardens has it, but I have never purchased from them. I love the very tiny leaves and the way this rose mounds and spreads it really hugs the ground, Maybe 3-4" tall on a mature plant. I would love Electric Blanket if J&P could get the RMV under control. I ranted about this recently, it just makes me mad with the 'Virus" Free ads and all their claims. I saw Blossom Blanket this Spring and it is a very pretty rose, I wish that I had purchased it when I saw it! Diana

I have 6 drawf purple pavement roses. Like you said, they bloom heavy in the spring (lovely fragrance) and then only sporadically the rest of the summer. They are very healthy but extremely thorny. They also sucker like mad and are a Japanese Beetle magnet. They are almost stripped of the leaves from them. Mine are own root and it's impossible to keep them in bounds. Some of the runners they produce are 8 feet away for the original plant, coming up in the middle of the lawn most of the time. I'm tired of fighting with them for so little reward and I am removing them this fall and replacing with something else. My growing season is just too short to waste on roses that don't bloom enough. If I wanted flowering shrubs I would grow azaleas, at least they aren't thorny. If you decide to go with the pavement roses, I would suggest the grafted ones so you don't have the suckering problem. Seafoam Here is a photo of 3 Seafoam taken in June. They are in a raised garden so the flowers look higher above the ground then they actually are. It's a very healthy, hardy and floriferous rose. As you say, it is not bright green but a pretty decent, worthy rose Cherrie

My many different salvias are mixed in with; ground roses... my favorite is Sunrunner; various small trees.... Vitex, Fig, dwarf Citrus, fruit trees.... peaches, pluots, cherries, apriums and apricots; RockRose (Cistus purpures), Rosemary, Agaves, Texas Ranger ( Leucophyllum frutescans), Russian Sage (Perovskia), Yucca (Hesperaloe parviflora), Wall Germander (Teucrium chamaedrys), grapes, Matilija Poppy (Romneya), Lavanders, Jerusalem Sage )Phlomis), Germander (Teucrium fruticans), Desert Spoon (Dasylirion wheeleri), Daylilies, Irises, Butterfly Bush (Buddleia), Broom (Cystis), Brugmansias. They all work well in a very full, blousy way.