It looks very nice Marcia. Welcome to N. IL. If you are near zip 61014 you can come out and look at my groundcovers and see what some zone 5 hardy ones look like in mass. or you can look at some via pics at link below... k Here is a link that might be useful: my pics

I was also going to suggest a trellis over the doors. However, you'll need a well-behaved vine that will not climb underneath the laps on your siding (don't use crossvine or ivy). Carriage style doors with hinges and handles (decorative...we have them). A tree placed as SH shows is another good landscaping idea. We have cultured stone as our foundation...I wouldn't use it on one side only. It's best used to wrap around the front and sides with it...and that gets costly, about $19 sf around here installed. May I also suggest that you paint your garage doors the same color as the body of your house instead of a trim color. That way, the doors blend with the sides of the house. Rather than a circular drive, you could put a guest parking space on this side of your parking pad. In other words, pave/cement a car width on the front side, but still lined up with the side line of your house. Then you could put up a little fence and gate to "greet" guests and direct them to the front door. We did something similar, only we have a small island of landscaping between our guest parking pad and our parking pad. Cameron

get the table first if you get one similar to this one in the pic, that matches your cabinets, and do a diff chair (s) you could do something like this pendant this pic has similar floor tile to yours. table leans more on the red side like your cabs. the rattan chairs work well.

Braved the heat and moved around some hostas today, and put the NOIDs / possible Lemon Limes where the Undulatas were. Hopefully I can get something better next spring, but at least for now, no more clashing. And the 2 Undulatas found a home in a dark corner that needed brightening up. Before: Now: The 2 NOIDs / possibly Blue Boy's in the top pic have been temporarily located to another area, but may go up for adoption, as I already have a couple more of them in other spots.