The Bradford Pear would look a whole lot better if you really thinned the hell out of it to open it up and see through it abit. Keeping the majority of the shrubs you have, but widening the shrub beds another 4 feet out into the front lawn would allow you to plants flowering perennials in front to "face down" the taller shrubs beyond. Grasses or flowering shrubs would work well. It may be too "southern" for you, but lining the walk with grassy clumpers like one of the Liriopes, Acorus or dwarf daylilies to contrast in foliage color and texture against the Ilex against the house would give a better year round appearance than the Gladiolus. Bedding dahlias could also give you quite abit of color in this same location, over a much longer season of bloom. Underneath the tree, I would suggest uniting the area with a dense groundcover with some massed groupings of foliage or color that will take the shade and root competition. Clumps of Dwarf Heavenly Bamboo, Acanthus mollis, Star Jasmine might be good, and Pachysandra or Dwarf Mondo Grass would certainly look better than that coarse mulch. If you want to mass bulbs in this area, I'd suggest using white Paperwhite Narcissus to play off the white bloom of the Bradford Pear. You might also consider adding a grouping of smaller Natchez Crape Myrtles to the left of the house to help balance the view from the street, and give you some summer bloom as well.

I think it's wind, water and wildlife, the 3 W's, that spread seed of invasive plants. They spread good plants too, you just don't hear much complaining about those though! We lived in TN for awhile, near Chattanooga. The Mimosa tree, or Silk tree, is very invasive there. It lines the roadways. As does the Princess tree, Kudzu and the Bradford Pear. Christy, If Prunus serotina, the wild black cherry, or I'm guessing Celtis occidentalis, the hackberry, are indigenous to your area, then they'd never be considered invasive. Or if it's Morus rubra, the red mulberry and not Morus alba, the white mulberry, that's an indigenous plant too. If it's M. alba, that's invasive. Our indigenous (or native) flora don't out-compete with other indigenous plants, like invasive plants do. Sherry, I found a site for MS invasive plants here. Scroll down and you see Silk tree, Albizia julibrissin, listed. I'm not telling you to cut it down though! You said you can handle it and I believe you. I hear everyone on the Japanese honeysuckle, the multi-flora rose and whatever else is on my parents property that my hubby and I have been elected to cut down, brush (or is it bush?) hog, and get rid of. Painstakingly hard work. Here, I get the white mulberry and I also have gotten barberry. That dark reddish purple thorny shrub? Neighbors to our north, a block up, have it. It gets berries, and like you said Christy, they eat the berries, come here, sit on another shrub, and poop out a nice fertilized nugget that in turn becomes some alien plant I don't want! What am I gonna do though? Dig it up, that's all. I grumble...lol....I sure hope I don't sound preachy. That is NOT my intention at all! Has anyone heard of Ailanthus altissima? Tree of Heaven? When we bought this place, it was dead of winter. To my standards (jungle style.lol..), there was hardly any landscaping. There was this one big tree in the back corner. Hmmm....what is it? Spring comes, and it leaves out, then makes these seeds. Hundreds of thousands of seeds! Those things blew all over the place! What is this dang tree? Finally, a tree service just happened to be in the alley behind us. I run back there and ask them, what is this tree? "why, that's a tree of Heaven!" I know all of you heard a really loud NOOOO, where ever you live! That would have been me. LOL I called another tree service, the one that was in the alley was hired by the city, and had them come and cut down that thing. Much to my dismay, there's still a female in the empty lot behind us, a male 2 doors down, and countless seed that still resides just under the top layer of soil. Did you know the seed is viable for 50 yrs?? And the female back there is still producing....ey ey ey....

I thought Persian Berry when I saw the 2nd one. I have it, but don't have a good pic so I wasn't sure. I kept looking for your narcissus, when duh, saw your link. You have some lovely roses! And that is a very cute narcissus.

My dianthus and gerberas bloom year-round, but they especially like this time of year. My mouse ear coreopsis is blooming, and my azalea that I planted last fall has suddenly exploded. Although it's already peaked, for a while there my columbine looked like it had yellow fireworks bursting all over it. I was especially pleased with that, because I thought I had lost it after foolishly planting it in the dead of summer. I was so pleased, in fact, that I went out and bought two more this spring. I also have a volunteer that sprouted in the middle of my yard last summer that was so pretty I moved it into a bed. It's full of purple blooms right now - I'm pretty sure it's some type of petunia. Sadly, once again, my gardenia isn't blooming, and doesn't even have buds - but I may have found out why. I bought a new desk this weekend, and in cleaning out the old one, I found the tag for it, and saw that it advises pruning off the previous summer's new growth in winter - which I've never done. I'm going to assume that encourages blooming, and will make a point of doing it this year. I think that's all of the existing perennials that are blooming - right now my yard is crazy with color but the rest are either annuals or are newly planted this spring.