I'm very late to the party, but here goes. Well, I think your place has lots of potential. I did not read every response in detail, so I hope I don't duplicate what others have said. I'm not a professional designer. First where in PA are you? I'm in Lancaster county and there are lots of quality nurseries with good prices. A good book for beginners is "Garden Primer" by Barbara Damrosch. And it is good advice, but hard to do, maybe try living thru all four seasons before you make changes. You might get surprised by drainage patterns, etc. Is your house visible from the road? Maybe take a pic from there to help visualize the house and setting. Do you ever plan to subdivide the property or build another home, as the previous owners did? This would make a difference for large tree placement. My sense of your question is that you just want to make your house and its setting look better. It sounds like you are new to gardening and still developing a sense of style. The curving path is nice. I would suggest making an area in front of door that would serve as a "landing", say about a 4 ft x 4 ft square (could be bigger though, but not entire width of house) that would be a transition from path to front door. Use slate or more substantial stepping stones for this landing. Then move planters away from house to somewhere else. Make the beds deeper, with some curves. I read somewhere that if take your house and tipped it forward on its 'face', your beds should be that deep. I would use some cone shaped evergreens by corners of the house, do not exceed the height of house. Pant a grouping of shrubs to step down a bit from these tallest shrubs next to the corners. Maybe around the corner from the garage you could make a little landing pad for garbage can, and then they could be somewhat hidden from view by the evergreens. I'm thinking in hot summer you will want the cans outside and not in the garage. Maybe a trellis between window and driveway to soften exterior of house. Adding shutters will be nice, use the paneled type, not louvered. (you have enough "lines" with the siding.) Not sure about good choices for deer resistant plants, that seems to be very regional. Maybe the nursery down the road can help with that.. How much sun do you get, and what zone? If sunny then you could do a lot. Holly both evergreen and deciduous with some berries. You will need male and female plants with hollies. Also, arborvitae, or juniper, for evergreen shrubs. I would put some rounded, kind of fluffy evergreens, in front also. There are some arborvitaes like that, some have gold foilage. I think the foundation planting can't get too huge though, you don't want to overwhelm the house. Then some easy care perennials, coral bells, daylily, daisy, white and purple cone flowers, lambs ears, yarrow and some ornamental grasses. Other deciduous shrubs that could be nice in a a separate border are butterfly bush, they can get huge, though. Viburnums, some smell wonderful, but others not so much, so check them out when in bloom. Clethra is nice but takes forever to leaf out in spring so you may not want this in front of house. Other easy care deciduous shrubs are itea, fothergilla, they both get nice fall color, beauty berry, red twig dogwood, blue mist shrub. You could incorporate these with some huge spruces in a largish bed, some distance from house but visible from inside. Best of luck.

You guys are awesome! I finally got back here today to see if anyone responded and I couldn't believe the number of people who were willing to help. I love the ideas. I'll have to talk to my dh about the shrubs. I like the idea of hiring a professional to trim. The t.v. antennae was actually removed a couple of weeks ago, so I'll have to give my dh a high five for that one! The front door is painted red, but could use a new coat. The house is brick, so we will not paint it, but we have always thought that a lighter trim color might help. The windows are vinyl, so there's nothing we can do there. The entire side of the house (both sides) has a dark wood vertical siding - not sure what that's called). We should probably paint that a lighter tan? The flowers around the lightpost were the ones that were there when we bought the house. Last summer, I changed those to pansies, I believe. There is a nice selling point to this house - our back yard was beautifully landscaped by the former owners. I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to landscaping or taking care of plants, but I am going to try really hard this spring to get the back yard ready. It has a water feature that I'm also clueless about. I may need to get some help with that. I'll attach a picture of our back yard, so you can see our true selling point. The pictures taken in August were taken on move-in day, thus the van in the back yard. Any pictures taken last summer would not be suitable for viewing since I was due for baby #4 in September - not a lot was done to the back yard! Some occasional weeding - that was about it. The rest of my energy was used up on the vegetable garden. Phew! Thank you again! Caryn Here is a link that might be useful: back yard

Congratulations on the new house! I know others will have great ideas for you, probably better than mine since I am not a pro, but I would start with a tree in the left of the front yard-maybe something flowering if that appeals to you. I would also be tempted to put a window box under your front window. They can be tricky to maintain, but you can put pots in them that are easily changed out if something dies. I don't know where you live, so maybe you could share your zone. It will make a huge difference in suggestions. For example, I am in zone 7 in Northern Virginia. I could recommend lots of things for my area, but that won't do you a lot of good if you are in California or Minnesota! Until then, maybe a few pots with flowers you like until you can start landscaping. Your house is cute, so I have no doubt you can enhance that.

Boxwood is usually a good hedge, nice green color. I would get a door without oval glass & brass before I touched the gable. Paint the door the same color as the window trim