What a pretty house. Too bad you can’t widen the sidewalk, at least near the porch. It looks soooo skinny.

Likewise on the existing planting beds. They are skinny as well, too small for all but groundcovers and maybe a very small ornamental grass.

In the last picture you posted, see how half of the bed is under the eave? Not good for rainfall and heat. What direction does the house face? If south, you are going to have a hard time keeping your plantings from burning up due to reflected sun off the house and reduced rainfall. But if the beds were twice as deep, you could plant bigger stuff and place them at least 4 feet away from the house.

If I read your dimensions correctly, the walk is 4 ft. wide; a reasonable width. Do you want the railing on the outside (away from the garage) or inside (close to the garage)? My pick would be away from the garage to allow easier access to the bed between walk and garage. Wrought iron or wood painted to match the house trim can work well enough.

It looks like you can hardly plant anything in that front bed. What are those shelves in the bed? They take up a lot of planting space. The front bed should come out to a minimum as far as the porch; even better, bring them out as far as the middle of the garage window. That way your planting scheme can be layered and uncramped -- you'll have many more plant options. If you can't move the existing planter, add another in front of it and plant them as if they were one.

some ideas

Littlebug, I will not be able to change the width of the sidewalk. The house faces North Northeast so the exisiting flower beds along the house are mostly shaded, but from the porch forward gets plenty of sun. I have thought about making the beds bigger but have very little time to maintain them so don't want to make more than I can take care of.

Kiminpl, There will be a railing placed on both sides. I will go with metal railings over wood for maintenace reasons. Those are escape window covers in the front flower bed and I agree they take up a lot of room. I have found it hard to plan around and make them blend in. I think the only solution will be to make the flower bed larger so that I would be able to plant in front of them.

Dig Doug's Designs, Thank you for the pictures I really like them. Is it going to look odd to use the post that is existing on the porch, since it can't be moved, instead of at the end of the railing like you show? I would love to change the exsisting post so it is larger and more decorative but there is not much room to do so.

You can use the existing post. You need turn the rail 90 degrees at the porch. so that it can meet the post.

Interesting issues - we dealt with some similar ones here about 20 years ago. The railings we uses are aluminium - no rusting problems like there are for wrought iron! Also, for sloped sections the verticals are attached to the horizontals so that they swivel to perfectly match the slope of the stairs or ramp - they come in preassembled panels that are cut to fit the length required. The pillars on our porch have wooden posts that are covered with an aluminium jacket that makes them look larger. Something like that might work for you. The railing is attached to the posts and, as you can see in the picture below, we needed to/were able to use short sections of railing to work around the stairs (you will also note that the stairs are offset from the front door - in large part to ensure that I don't accidentally fall down the front steps if I come out the door too fast! With the ramp, that wouldn't be a problem with your place, but there was no room for a ramp here so there is a porch-lift at the end of the porch on the left behind the lattice - which was supposed to go all the way to the roof but got screwed up during construction and we never got around to fixing it!) The bed in front of the porch is only about 12" wide! It is dry from being under the roof overhang so does need periodic watering. The 'Emerald Gaiety' euonymus shrubs are pretty tough though and have survived happily there since they were planted in 2000. They just need a bit of trimming now and then to cut off any shoots that get taller than the porch deck. The Rodgersia that are blooming white in this June 2016 picture are supposed to be plants that like moist conditions but do well there. They do get burnt leaves in August though. They die back to the ground in winter, which leaves space to dump snow from clearing the driveway. The euonymus is evergreen. There used to be a lovely clematis growing up the lattice but snails went berserk a few years ago and killed it! I haven't got around to replacing it with something else yet. One of these days I will..... maybe.... :-)

I was thinking something similar to what WoodyOak wrote for the rails and porch support, a metal rail with clean lines, and a casing over the porch post to enlarge it and make it look intentional and ornamental rather than purely functional. As Woody's photo shows, the rail needs to go up the ramp and along the porch in both directions as well as between the post and the house, for safety if nothing else.

As Kimipl mentioned, you will want to bring the front beds farther out in order to plant something that will be attractive - there just isn't room at this point. If you plant correctly sized shrubs with long-lasting flowers along with evergreens and then underplant with an evergreen groundcover and mulch well while you wait for the groundcover to fill in, there won't be a huge amount of maintenance. Bare soil encourages weeds and makes them more difficult to remove. An organic mulch such as shredded bark will help keep moisture and temperature more even and over time improve the soil. Installing shrubs that won't grow beyond the allotted space is another key to lower maintenance. Be sure to research their size somewhere more reliable than the plant tag, which often gives sizes at 5 years. A good book on shrubs or a website like the MO Botanical Garden Plant Finder will give you the real story and save you having to prune or replace overgrown shrubs. It will look a bit sparse when first planted, but you can add annuals or just enjoy it looking sparse. You may want to do the research before moving the bed so that you have the correct spacing for what you want to plant. A small tree, included in an outsweep of the bed at the corner, would add to the overall feel. And while you are moving the bed, I would get rid of the regular wiggles. Instead, either a straight line or a single long sweep of a curve would look better. I like the choice of the material used to create the beds. It reminds me of the layered sandstones common in the part of OH where I grew up.

Between the walk and the garage I would plant some smaller height, mounding shrubs and an evergreen groundcover to tie it together. It's a fairly small bed, so use a limited number of kinds of plants, even just one type of shrub and one type of groundcover. Because the overhang is so large, you may need to add a system for watering such as a hose with emitters in order for moisture to adequate. This will be a quite shady bed, with the garage, house, and their overhangs eliminating most, if not all, of the direct sun, so take that into account in choosing plants. You want plants that will tolerate full shade and whatever pH your soil has as well as perhaps salt from winter deicing.

On the outside of the walk, my choice would be to make the bed wider, but regardless, you want plants that are billowy enough to reach the top of the walk, but low enough that the walk doesn't feel enclosed or cramped. Typically I am not fond of plantings on the outside of a walkway, but with your ramp, I think it makes sense to have a planted bed as long as the plants won't make the walk feel like a tunnel or hide the clear sight-lines to the door.

I notice that you have a pot between your bench and the front of the porch and one alongside the door. I would make those much larger to fit the scale of the porch. The one by the door, I would actually consider putting on a pedestal off the porch (perhaps in front of the pillar) since a larger pot will make the door crowded. Otherwise just don't use one by the door.

WoodyOak I do like your post jackets, I will have to see if I can find something similar. I had found some of the adjustable slope railing but everything I found is surface mount. I'm afraid with how narrow the ramp is (4') that if I surface mount railings it is going to seem too narrow. I think my plan at this point is to mount to the sides and/or in the ground.

NHBabs thank you for the input. I will have to do some research on plants and see what I can do about enlarging the flower beds. The hardest part will be reworking the drainage hidden in the beds, the rest is just time consuming.

Between the house and the garage I have a ground cover almost fully covering and a grass like Dig Doug's Designs showed in his pictures. Could I put a couple more of the same grass in the bed or do you think I would be better with some kind of shrubs, the grass I planted only got about 4' tall.

As for the flower pots by the door, I was more focused on getting the grass established last summer, so those pots came from the old house. I figured some flowers and color were better than nothing. I had thought about a single larger planter on the porch or also wondered about a window box style planter attached to the porch railing. I would also love to find some larger more proportional pots (3' wide by 3' tall) to go beside the garage doors, but haven't had much luck.

I’m pretty sure you’d be able to find sidemount brackets for the railing. Have you talked to a supplier of the adjustable slope railings and asked if they have sidemount brackets that would work with their railing system?

Every dealer I have talked to does not have a side mount bracket that will work for us. The ramp slab is to thin to attach the railing to and the ramp slab overhangs the footings 4" on either side. We would have to have custom brackets made and if we are going to do that it is just as easy to have the entire railing made.

If you have the name of the manufacturer, it might be worth a call to them to inquire about a sidemount option to fit your situation... If you do need to have the railing custom made, see if you can find someone who can do it in aluminium. At our previous house we had a wrought iron railing made and trying to keep it from rusting was a constant issue! The aluminum railings here have been perfectly maintenance-free since they were installed in 1999!

I would build a couple of cheekwalls that extended from the porch about 4' and place railing on them. This would allow the opening to be as wide as possible. If you fence all the way to the existing walk width, it's going to be a very pinched looking opening, which equals not very inviting looking.

BTW, it does not help maintenance to create a landscape bed when the bed is too shallow for typical plants. It makes it harder!

A H, for either side of the walkway, you don't want things that get much higher than the porch floor. You don't want the walkway to feel crowded, so 4' grass all along the side would be too tall IMO. Look for something shorter and mounding to fill the space as opposed to tall and thin.