How about planting a clemetis on the pole with the morning glories and black eyed susans on the left of the pole and echinechea(spelling?)on the right, creeping phlox under and where there is room put in some daffodil bulbs for all season color. Some creeping thyme around the stones. All of these are easy care and fill in quick and thick to keep the weeds down. Hope this helps.

Before I thought about planting I'd address access to that door. Some kind of path leading from the door so you're not stepping onto grass. With that in place it might be better to expand the planting areas and then consider what to put in them. It all depends on what is behind the camera. Is this a front door? A rear door? What do you see when you're standing on the stoop?

Thank you for your thoughts. The large tree to the right of the walk, right up against the house is some sort of contorted pine. White pine maybe? It is right in front of a window, and could probably stand to be pruned, but I don't think my husband would go for removing it even though it does block the window. For some reason he really likes it. I like it, too, but I think the house could look so much better with it having a hard prune or removed altogether. On the right of that, there are three yews under the other window. They look terrible this year - I was just out pruning and they have lots of brown patches. Yews have never done much for me, so I probably will look at removing those, too, and I agree we need a master plan for doing this over the course of a couple of years vs trying to plan each section individually. Yes, the front entry is cave like! We are also looking to make some improvements there and are exploring the idea of lightening the paint in that area, along with trim and garage doors so the whole thing looks less dingy. I like the idea of lowering the shrubbery and adding brighter vegetation in an effort to make it less cavey. The mulch was something added last year, by the previous owner's mulch man. We have not been happy with the performance or looks. We were thinking to remove it and use a cedar mulch, but I do like the idea of a ground cover instead, so we will explore that, too. I like the idea of just a few taller plants around the light post, but am not opposed to getting rid of that post and eliminating that bed altogether. There is enough lighting on the house at night when we need it, that we don't need the lamp for nighttime lighting. This is the area to the left of the garage. The weigela need to go, and the flowering tree needs some pruning at the top to remove dead branches. Black-eyed Susans fill in at th base of the flowering tree. The yew to the left of the garage door can be removed. I probably should have mentioned this left side of the garage in my original post but didn't want to seem greedy for your time!! Our lot runs to the pine trees. The blacktop driveway you see is for the next house over - it's kind of close, but we have lots of privacy in the back and on the other side. The two tall pine trees in the center of the pic are coming out in June. There was a 3rd one in the forefront until a huge windstorm recently knocked it over. Those trees are in terrible shape and can't be saved. We had a lawn guy here last night who said that the patchy grass up against our driveway is actually golf course grass. It looks bad and very different front the adjoining neighbor's grass so we are going to replace that. Lawn guy said the easiest way to go is "solar radiation." ;) The pine trees gave us quite a bit of privacy but we are losing that. We can't put up a fence, but I'd love to find something else that would give us at least a little privacy screen on that side. This is another view of the side of the garage from last August, I think. Love the hydrangea! At the back of the hydrangea is a small, no-so-private-anymore deck tucked in there. Thanks again for the ideas. I really appreciate it!

> "more than 4 hours of direct sun." That falls within the designation "...or part shade" in plant descriptions, which gives you thousands of possibilities in nearly every category of readily available plants, including flowering plants. Just know that the designation refers to plant growth, not to number of flowers /frequency of (re)blooming, both of which correlate with amount of sun. You will get good flowering on plants that are known to flower well in your amount of sun; future commenters here can recommend based on their experiences in zone 8b. May I request that you always keep native plants in your thinking.