Dusty Miller makes a great accent plant or if you're looking for a perennial, Artemesia 'Powis Castle' (also spelled 'Powys'). There are so many beautiful coleus varieties that can take a lot of sun that would work well, too. For flowers with contrasting foliage cosmos would work (just check the varieties....some of them get monstrously tall ; 'Sonata' is a shorter variety.) and so would blue salvia (I like S. farinacea aka mealycup sage 'Victoria Blue' and 'Fairy Queen' which boasts a bi-color blue & white flower spike.)

Thanks for the suggestions. The Japanese maple was about 15 years old and I was sad we had to remove it. I've stayed away from butterfly bushes in the past because the ones around here always seem to look weedy and overgrown and the flowers are not very impressive. I might be changing my mind - Miss Ruby looks very pretty although it might be a little big for the area. I also recently purchased a blue chip butterfly bush and put it in a pot to see how I like it. It's supposed to be self cleaning but I'm not sure what that means. So far the spent blooms are just hanging there making the plant look pretty unattractive. I haven't cut them off yet because I wanted to see what would happen. I'm going to check out the other suggestions too. I have plenty of time to decide because I probably won't be adding anything until the fall. At this point in the season, it's too hard to keep new plantings watered.

...that's quite a clump to dig out, might need two of you.... I've got a Miscanthus with roses, but feel it's better with the flimsier blooms of Teas and Chinas.... how about another rose in its place to go with the others?.... it just seems a little odd to put some other type of plant there.... that would be my first impression... ...but Clematis are always good to use and I see you are thinking about one, so my suggestion here would be for Clematis 'Durandii', which is herbaceous, so it's simply cut down to the ground each winter and will grow upwards of 6 foot very quickly during the summer... it obviously needs support.... it has a long season from mid June to end August over here... ...here is part of one in my garden, I grow it with an Austin rose not in shot...

I ended up hiring a company where I bought our JMs. We ended up going with a red dragon under the window near the door and an aconitifolium on the right side of the house. There's going to be multiple boxwood (variety of styles), weigela, princess holly, daubs frosted juniper, blue star juniper, shasta daisy, and salvia. We're sitting down with him in 3 weeks to go over his plan (I already bought 90% of the plants during a super sale). We'll see if anything changed.