I'm very late to the party, but here goes. Well, I think your place has lots of potential. I did not read every response in detail, so I hope I don't duplicate what others have said. I'm not a professional designer. First where in PA are you? I'm in Lancaster county and there are lots of quality nurseries with good prices. A good book for beginners is "Garden Primer" by Barbara Damrosch. And it is good advice, but hard to do, maybe try living thru all four seasons before you make changes. You might get surprised by drainage patterns, etc. Is your house visible from the road? Maybe take a pic from there to help visualize the house and setting. Do you ever plan to subdivide the property or build another home, as the previous owners did? This would make a difference for large tree placement. My sense of your question is that you just want to make your house and its setting look better. It sounds like you are new to gardening and still developing a sense of style. The curving path is nice. I would suggest making an area in front of door that would serve as a "landing", say about a 4 ft x 4 ft square (could be bigger though, but not entire width of house) that would be a transition from path to front door. Use slate or more substantial stepping stones for this landing. Then move planters away from house to somewhere else. Make the beds deeper, with some curves. I read somewhere that if take your house and tipped it forward on its 'face', your beds should be that deep. I would use some cone shaped evergreens by corners of the house, do not exceed the height of house. Pant a grouping of shrubs to step down a bit from these tallest shrubs next to the corners. Maybe around the corner from the garage you could make a little landing pad for garbage can, and then they could be somewhat hidden from view by the evergreens. I'm thinking in hot summer you will want the cans outside and not in the garage. Maybe a trellis between window and driveway to soften exterior of house. Adding shutters will be nice, use the paneled type, not louvered. (you have enough "lines" with the siding.) Not sure about good choices for deer resistant plants, that seems to be very regional. Maybe the nursery down the road can help with that.. How much sun do you get, and what zone? If sunny then you could do a lot. Holly both evergreen and deciduous with some berries. You will need male and female plants with hollies. Also, arborvitae, or juniper, for evergreen shrubs. I would put some rounded, kind of fluffy evergreens, in front also. There are some arborvitaes like that, some have gold foilage. I think the foundation planting can't get too huge though, you don't want to overwhelm the house. Then some easy care perennials, coral bells, daylily, daisy, white and purple cone flowers, lambs ears, yarrow and some ornamental grasses. Other deciduous shrubs that could be nice in a a separate border are butterfly bush, they can get huge, though. Viburnums, some smell wonderful, but others not so much, so check them out when in bloom. Clethra is nice but takes forever to leaf out in spring so you may not want this in front of house. Other easy care deciduous shrubs are itea, fothergilla, they both get nice fall color, beauty berry, red twig dogwood, blue mist shrub. You could incorporate these with some huge spruces in a largish bed, some distance from house but visible from inside. Best of luck.

The hardest thing about making this sort of a change is actually taking the plunge - my suggestion is if you are not thrilled go ahead and take a chance. I appreciate everyone's comments. I am suprised with such positive remarks considering the pics are really not good examples - it really looks great in person though. Thanks again for everyone's suggestions and comments. Hopefully this post will be helpful to someone else considering making a big change. With that said - I'd like to suggest for the forum that people ALWAYS post their actual colors when they post a picture. I know the lighting, computer screen, etc can make things look different but it is very helpful to see something in action as opposed to on a paint swatch. I would have found it invaluable.

This is an interesting subject, and I'll just throw my own story in, too. When we moved into the neighborhood, I pretty much thought the man across the street must be a hoarder. You know, the typical appliances in the driveway that never went away started creeping down the length of the house, the paint was chipped off the house and trim, lots of vehicles, etc. It was really an eyesore, especially for us across the street. A neighbor who had been in the area a long time spoke to me about it. He said that man had been in the neighborhood for 50 years and had done a lot to help neighbors out over the years. He was elderly now. We concocted a scheme to offer to buy materials and paint his home for him. Like many elders (and Americans), he was fiercely independent so it was touchy how to approach it. Luckily, I was painting my own home at the time and we could chalk the materials up to left overs. In any case, the man was very grateful and allowed us to freshen up his house. Meanwhile, another neighbor took up moving and fertilizing his lawn. Not so very long after, his adult son came to visit and realized his dad had advanced Altzheimers. (He was living with a relative, so we assumed his health was being taken care of). Adult son and his wife took over, taking care of dad and the disrepair found inside. Which is great, but I'll always wonder if we should have somehow known how bad things were and gotten his family involved somehow sooner. They are haunted by that question, too. I glad we were able to help out and take a non-confrontational, cooperative approach. Not that it always works out, I know. Things have to be desperately bad for the city to get involved and even then, there's a lot of ethical and legal tension between concepts of privacy, automony and freedom on one hand and welfare and safety and the good of the whole on the other. Not unlike what you see with child protective services... I came from a region in the country (small town Iowa) where the motto was "Do whatever you want, but do not disturb your neighbors". Here in Alaska, it seems a lot of people think they are homesteading even in an urban setting... I consider home and yard upkeep to be part of my civic and community contribution. Taking care of my own postage stamp (which is about the size of my house and yard) is the least I can do. Wish everyone felt that way, but I also realize some who do are faced with barriers and don't have the resources to do it. I hope that isn't me, someday.

IDK what sort of rose bush you have..but in the case of your cone flowers I might rethink what you plant. Cone flowers are not suitable for the sort of raised bed that seems to be where you are headed. They also typically not a foundation plant. They would be better in a LARGE island bed in your front yard. I think to achieve the look you want with pots they need to be larger and they need to be all the same. OR just one super large one with a bright color. Your bed is not large and with proper tools, patience and a lot of elbow grease you could get the roots and rocks removed, amend the entire bed and plant but it sounds like the trough type planters suggested above will work perfectly. I love that they are not wood. Wood planters are much more temporary. Sure it will be years --but they will rot from soil and water touching them. In the mean time I found when planting things in rocky soil small works well. Sometimes patience is what is most needed in poor planting conditions. One small hole with a single division is often manageable. Then you wait for the plant to find it's way, spread and fill in your space. I plant mostly in the shade and this area was on top of a rocky tile field. No way could I have planted a large anything! But small divisions from other areas around my home I did, and they managed to expand.