Are you planning to be in the house for a long time? What are your landscaping goals? Will you do the work yourself? How much maintenance are you willing to do? What kind of budget do you have? Assuming one of your goals is to increase curb appeal, I would move existing bushes to another place in back (if you want to be economical and it is possible, or just get rid of them), buy a small flowering tree (that will never exceed 15-20 ft) like a dogwood for the south corner of the house and plant it 10-15 ft away from the corner (if you'll be there a while you'll have the pleasure of watching it grow). Consider what evergreens are in your budget as foundation plants to cover the foundation. Go to a local nursery and ask what plants (especially evergreens since you want year round coverage) they recommend for your area as foundation plants. Know before you buy how much sun / shade hits each spot you'll be planting, whether it gets afternoon sun or shade, and what kind of water drainage there is in that soil in those particular spots. And it will change season to season so take note throughout the whole year. "Put the right plant in the right spot" is the most important thing so you need to know the spots you'll be filling and read the plant descriptions carefully to match them up. The nursery will be glad to help you. Good luck!

It would be helpful if you return to the same view as the first picture and add right and left flanking views. That way we could see the overall setting and what's outside of your property that might need to be screened.

I will get those photos, absolutely. Thank you for the comments so far!

Here we go!

Right and left. Hope this gives a better idea of what we've got to work with.

The new pictures help a lot. The goal of landscaping a front yard is not to put a decoration in front of the house, but to create a setting for it. The plantings will extend beyond the sides of the house, to as much as is allowed by the size of the yard.

Begin with reshaping the bed line and keep the overall plan simple. It would be nice to widen the walk. If you have the opportunity to re-do it, raise its termination at the base of the steps so that the bottom riser is the same vertical dimension as the other steps. (It presently looks much taller.)

Insofar as maintenance is concerned, there are a lot of lower hanging limbs and branches that encroach and clutter the view of the house. It would be a big improvement to remove those from the existing trees.

That's just awesome, thank you so much!

I see you really paid attention to the height of our windows in relation to the shrubs under them and even added an overhang to the porch. That's something I hadn't considered. It would definitely make the front of the house less bland to look at.

Our pathway is standard sidewalk width (3 feet, I believe), and I think redoing it is out of our budget right now. We're looking at installing a fence in the backyard and that's taking most of our budget this year. But I do see what you mean about the height of the first step. You can definitely feel the difference when climbing them.

I had a question about the placeholder images in your design. Basically just a translation for the layman, It looks like the two flanking trees are "small tree", the bush on the left is a low-lying evergreen, the one on the right is proportionally the same distance under the window as the one on the left and is also an evergreen and I can see the odd numbers of flowers (same color for consistency) scattered throughout. I also think you have a ground cover plant? I know many of these are our preference as far as specific plants, but I do wonder if you had any favorites when it comes to ground cover plants?

Oh and that branch is most assuredly coming down. I was looking at that just yesterday. We haven't seen you with leaves yet since we moved in so late last season but I can only imagine how dark it will keep the yard. I love big trees, but this guy is enormous, easily the biggest on our block. Hopefully it doesn't cause us any problems.

Thanks again!

Regarding the "place holders" ... "small trees" like this are large multi-trunk shrubs with lower limbs/branches removed. Might be something like lilac, burning bush, beauty bush, PG hydrangea, Jap. Maple, yew, etc. Each has its own personality, size, etc., so up to you to suit to your taste & needs. Likewise for shrubs below window. By the picture, I'm not saying evergreen, flowering or what have you. Just a general, approx. ultimate size and shape. For groundcover, I would look around your area and see what's growing well that would fit this size site and be the right height. Choose from what does well.

Mature trees take on a very stately appearance when they are limbed quite high and the trunks cleaned of all scruffy material.