I would like to grow flowers in my front yard, but I keep reading conflicting information about flower that will actually bloom in shade.

My house faces north and I have two mature trees in my front yard, as well as evergreens on each corner of the house. I also live in a neighborhood with mature trees, so my front yard get no direct sun once the trees leaf out. Also, the places I'm looking to put flowers are next to my house and in front of some evergreen bushes that are foundation plantings.

I thought I had taken pictures last year, but can't find them. These were taken a decade ago, on a fairly sunny day and will have to do. I'll note what I want to address and any changes to the pics below.

This is an overview of our house. The slope is now bare, as the leaves from the tree you see gather so heavily there that it's killed the grass completely. Since the grass died off, the soil has eroded and we've discovered that apparently the previous owners had a similar issue, as there are large river rocks in certain places, so it looks like they were trying to do some terracing at one point.

I would like to find some sort of low maintenance groundcover that won't take over the rest of the yard, if possible. Or really, any suggestions of what I can do to make that area look nicer than just patches of grass/weeds and dirt.

The beds next to the house. This is pretty accurate to the light level this gets. These bed used to all have the evergreen bushes, but they died in the top two beds. The one in the middle has what we were told was a shade loving "bush" in the center, but it's more of a low to the ground plant. (I will try to update this post tomorrow when it's light outside).

The whiskey barrel bed is the same, except that the whiskey barrel now has "something" growing in it. To be honest, we have no idea what it is, as we didn't plant it, but I think it might be honeysuckle. I'd love to put flowers in the whiskey barrel, but I have no idea what.

Also, I'd like the green stuff in that bed to stay. I don't know what it is, but it was something that's been transferred from house to house since I was a child.

Here, I'd like something to put in that middle bed. Preferably something that isn't just green. I'd like some color and something that's tall enough that you can see it from the street.

Also, I should note that just out of the left of the picture is a water faucet, so anything put behind the whiskey barrel will have to either be low or something that can deal with a hose.

Finally, I'd like to do some sort of something in front of these. They are now about window height and are about a foot wider than this picture. In this picture, they end where that concrete slab that sticks out is. Basically, I'd like to turn that dead section where there's no grass into something. One good thing about this picture is that you can kind of see what kind of sun it gets.

I should also note that the previous owners did some sort of black plastic "thing" under these, with a black plastic border trim, and had rocks instead of mulch. When this picture was taken, all of that had disintegrated, so it's all dirt and tiny rocks.

I'd like to till up this entire area, dig up the rocks, add new dirt, and a stone border, then put flowers there.

Sorry about having old pictures, instead of stuff that's much more recent, but I wanted to get a thread started before I got too busy and forgot.

Suggestions, ideas, scoldings for letting the front of my house look so sad and barren?