Congratulations on the new house.

I would start with the trees. Trees are the bones of any yard/garden. I would plant at least three large shade trees like oaks spread out in the front and then add a couple of understory flowering trees (research natives for your area) which can be slightly closer to the house. Lots of others will chime in, I am sure. Just go slowly. Better to get it right than rush and make mistakes.

ETA:. Wait on hydrangeas until you have some shade. They want plenty of water (hence their name-ha) and need a fair amount of shade.

Stand where the red lines cross and capture about the same scene in slightly overlapping shots, from far left to far right so we see well beyond the ends of the house. Don't move the camera location between shots; merely pivot. Post individual shots, not a panorama made of them.

Actually, while Hydrangea macrophylla cultivars like the Cityline series need shade during midday and the afternoon, Hydrangea paniculatas like Little Lime can tolerate a good amount of sun, depending on where you are (zone 7 covers a good amount of territory, so if you can add the nearest large city or even the state, it will help.) I grow 3 different H. paniculata cultivars in full sun (12+ hours midsummer) and no supplemental water once they were established, though they are well-mulched, though I am most likely north of you. Even last summer, which put us into official drought, they came through with flying colors. You may need to provide some shade, but they are far more tolerant of sun than most other hydrangeas. You should be aware that the masonry will heat up in sun, so give your plants plenty of space between the wall and the plants, and use heat tolerant plants closest to the wall.

cyn427, thank you for your comments. I agree we need some trees. We built our house in the middle of a 10 acre field, and the only trees are a couple of good size oak trees. We plan on putting some dogwood trees as understory trees this winter. We have a bunch on the property that are small and we can relocate them while they are dormant.

Yardvaark(9A), attached are the pictures you asked for. Thank you for any advice you have.

NHBabs(4b-5aNH), thank you for taking time to reply. We are in the piedmont triad region of NC, specifically just outside of Winston-Salem. I think its zone 7b. Thank you for your advice on the hydrangeas. I may just have to plant them along the northeastern side of the house, where it was sunny until 12:30pm today. I have thought about putting some sort of tree on each side of the porch, maybe a crepe myrtle or something else that will tolerate the full sun. That would offer some shade to the front once they get big enough.

We also plan on planting red sunset maple trees along the left side of our driveway leading to the house. We would like to plant on the right side, but our water and power lines are on that side and they follow the driveway to the house.

Let me just add that you are putting the cart before the horse :-) The layout or how you will use the garden and arrange outdoor entertaining spaces, the placement of planting beds and any needed pathways or other hardscaping should come before you do anything else, even tree planting. Locating where things should go is far more critical than figuring out the specific plant choices themselves.

It's a big property and looks like it could support some pretty extensive gardens. You'll have to decide how much actual "garden" you want as maintenance will be a forever concern. A big property is also difficult to advise as far as design is concerned - too much to address in an online forum. You will get some excellent advice here (especially from the gentleman posting above) but you may also benefit greatly by contracting with someone in your area that offers the same services. For a property that size, a full design plan will be far more effective and complete than the piecemeal advice we can provide here :-))

Yardvaark(9A), I really like that drawing. May I ask, what is a plan view drawing? Also, the gravel just in front of our house is the circle driveway. The house sits far off the road. We plan on lining the left side of the driveway with red sunset maple trees very soon. The right side has all of our utilities, so we don't think it's wise to plant anything there (although all along I wanted to line both sides with trees). Here is the pic from close to the road. The vegetation on left side of the property is going to keep growing, and it will be cut for hay at the end of the season.

gardengal48 (PNW Z8/9), Thank you for your thoughts and your time. We really don't want a lot of maintenance in the yard so we are done with all of the gardens. The only thing that we may consider adding would be a fire pit on the side of the house near the basement garage. There is already space for it though, its just a matter of doing the hardscaping if we ever win the lottery, lol.

The property is not a big open field though because we have also done the following:

planted a small apple orchard consisting of 16 trees, planted over an acre of wildflowers at the woods edge on the right side of the field and we have built a pole shed where we store equipment. We have 1/2 of an acre dedicated to a vegetable garden. We feel that the only thing left to do is plant our blueberry bushes (this coming winter) and the landscaping around the house.

I agree that maybe we should hire a landscape contractor but I was really just looking for suggestions on foundation plants that would do well both in the full sun and also our zone. Thanks!

Holy cow! You have an apple orchard, an acre of wildflowers, a vegetable garden of half an acre, and blueberry bushes - and you are "done with all the gardens??" I had to LOL.

littlebug zone 5 Missouri, I know, go ahead and laugh. We bought the land 2 years ago and planted the apple trees. They require some maintenance but not a lot at this point. The wildflowers were planted last year and should be self-sowing. The blueberry bushes will be planted this winter and vegetable garden will be quite an undertaking to keep up with but I have 2 girls that love to get dirty. I didn't mention that we have 15 chickens and my husband has 3 bee hives, lol! So, you get what I'm saying when I say "no more"?!

I am envious. Well, if I were 20 years younger I would be. Sounds like you are living the dream.

"... we have 15 chickens and my husband has 3 bee hives ..."

Can I come live with you guys? :-)

The perspective drawing I've offered above is ideas and a scheme. A plan view drawing is like a map of your yard, almost from the viewpoint of a bird flying overhead, looking down onto your yard. The advantage of the measured (at a specific scale) plan view drawing is that you can see exactly how close one thing is to another, how large things (like planting beds) are, and you can calculate quantities either by counting things up or measuring square footage and factoring in plant spacing. The plan view drawing is the best way to communicate to someone else, or even yourself, what work is to be done. If you handed the drawing I gave you to ten different people and told them to recreate it in your yard, you could end up with some recreations that didn't resemble others. There's lots of room for not getting placement exactly right. If ten different competent people were implementing landscapes from a PLAN view drawing, then one would expect that each implementation would be almost exactly like all the others. (This is THEORY though. There are other places that differences can occur ... plant material selection, quality of workmanship, etc.)