I have seen tall cape honey suckle (orange flowers) bushes against north wall, they look nice, do well in the kind of sun conditions you mentioned. Since your bed is 4 foot wide you can plant smaller flower bushes in front side. You might be better off filling the bed to 2-3 brick height or you can get flower bushes that grow tall and plant them at ground level inside bed.

Pete, I hope I didn't offend you. I just didn't want you to "enjoy" an experience similar to one I had with an intensely unpleasant neighbor that used to live next to me. I completely agree with you with the desire to not dump all those chemicals on my lawn and into the ground water. Before we attempted to suppress the creeping charlie, which if you think about it is actually pretty when it blooms, we had little tree frogs in the yard. Now we don't. I also don't believe in watering my grass. I, unfortunately, live in a town of what the hubby and I call Lawn Shavers. They mow the grass off at 1 1/2 or 2 inches then water it when it browns out in the summer. The same guy that used to come and swear at me about the clover in my yard had a yard full of dandelions and creeping charlie. Go figure! Maria

Here comes now another spammer who wasn't smart enough to even post an annoying link...

We live in South FL, In previous homes we had the textured concrete & pavers. They both needed pressure washing after time. We are building another pool now and decided to go with pavers, no staining, not slippery for kids, not 100% crazy about it but we Are going with it.