The current front walk from the drive looks too narrow, and the garden beds both along the walk and to the left of the door are too narrow. If it is in the budget, plan to move the walkway to a minimum of 5 feet from the building and widen it. That will give you a more generous garden, remove the the skinny bed to the street side of the walkway, and give you a walk wide enough for comfort and not crowded by plants needing frequent trimming. Right now everything is in skinny rows. I would also remove the swing and plan to incorporate that space into the garden, either with a small water feature such as an overflowing jar, or some art, or some low plants. You don't want to hide or crowd the approach to the door. If you own enough property to the right of the drive, I would plant a small tree over there about half way between your drive and the neighbor's and midway between the fence and the sidewalk. Your large tree gives the yard character and will help reduce cooling costs. It will also influence what will grow to the left side of the door since it will provide shade and compete for moisture with whatever plants you put in. Before removing what is there remember that establishing new plants may need extra care. If you decide on a central front walk, be sure to avoid doing major damage to the tree's roots. You won't get the most useful specific plant suggestions without information on your growing zone and the amount of sun the area gets, particularly influenced by the direction the house faces which can be determined by finding the house on a map. A north facing house will have the front in full shade, while south facing will have both more sun and heated masonry adjacent to the gardens. You may want to ask on the Florida Gardening forum or visit a few good local nurseries for specific plant suggestions. Think about foliage color and texture as well as flowers, and be sure that some of the plants retain nice foliage during winter. i would plan on doing all the hardscaping and painting before working on the gardens themselves so that you aren't damaging the plants. My personal taste would be to keep the house in a relatively neutral pastel color such as sage green or gray with the trim a slight darker shade of the same color. Make your door brighter or lighter since it is recessed. I don't think the current color which looks like a pale olive green on my screen is a problem. Do you not like it?

I think some kind of trellis or screening structure near the HVAC equipment or at the front edge of the roof as others suggested, could obscure the view. This is required in my area for commercial buildings with rooftop equipment. . In the "improve curb appeal" area, I think a lot can be done with your front yard. The side photo showing a glimpse of the neighbor's iron fence shows a walkway, a green shrub, and some grass. Your front yard could use some attractive landscaping. Or, if time or money is limited, put in some hard scaping - cover the dead lawn with a rock or gravel pattern and have an interesting center piece or two in the middle. Just something to make it look not-abandoned. Also, I think what looks like a chain-link gate to the left of the garage could be spruced up. Compare how it looks to the neighbor's redwood (?) or redwood colored wood fence on the other side of the yard. The wood fence looks attractive, the chain link gate looks scruffy. Good luck.

We are now ready for landscape design help. We have removed all of the shrubbery on the left side of the house. And all of the pavers have been moved to the backyard for future use. ( unless someone has an idea of how they could be used up front. Although I understand that a curved sidewalk would be an improvement over what we have, there is no budget for that right now. The plan is to resod in the spring. This is north facing, so very shady. I have so many design dilemmas! To the right of the front porch: If you look at the second and third pictures in my original post, you’ll see that the area to the right of the sidewalk is huge. I purchased a green Japanese maple ( smallish weeping Viridis) to put in there somewhere. Should I leave room for more grass on the right side of the side walk or just plant the whole thing? Also on the right side of the porch, there is only about 39” between the ground and the bottom of the windows. Need suggestions for what to plant there that wouldn’t need constant pruning ( don’t like gardenias because the brown flowers stay on the plant). If I plant low shrubs under the windows does everything else planted in there need to be as lower lower or can I punctuate with some taller shrubs as I get further out. Any suggestions for a mix of shrubs, or even forms, would be appreciated. To the left of the porch. If you refer to the first picture in this string, You’ll see that a very large bed of shrubbery was in front of the house. Once we cleared that out, there is now an extremely have extremely large area (about 28 feet from left to right and 36 feet from front to back.) . Because the house is small, I’m thinking of that bed somewhat narrower so that it isn’t so much in front of the house, but more to the side.I already purchased a Japanese stewartia to plant there ( sale at the nursery).Etsy sale I purchased 234 limelight hydrangeas. Also, to the left of the porch, there about 5 ft between the bottom of the window and the ground. Looking for suggestions on what to plant there. If I plant something different here than on the right side, would I want to somehow use some of the plants from the right side on this side as well to create balance? Any ideas for plantings in this area would be appreciated as well. I I did see some soft touch mahonia that I loved and wondered whether they would look good under the windows on the left, with maybe whatever we plant on the right side in front of those. Additionally, I would really appreciate suggestions for what to plant in that left corner. Thanks for your ideas!

Would remove the shutters and leave them off. Choose a new front door you truly like. You need to have some idea how you will eventually remodel the interior of the structure before making any major changes to its exterior, especially if you are considering altering how spaces are to be used. IF you are not planning to later alter the front exterior wall of the house, you definitely need a front porch, preferably across most of the front of the house ... from the garage to the corner where the main level of the house meets the add on on the right. You could use a shed roof with hip corners and a small forward facing gable over the entry door. ]What room is now in the add on to the right and how do you intend to reuse it when you remodel? Is there any usable basement beside it? What does the access between the upper level and the lower level look like? Are the rooms connected or open to each other? When you do remodel the house itself, seriously consider altering that roof line of the smaller lower section of the house (and perhaps the adjacent room) in some way to make it look less like an add on ... how you change the roof would, of course, depend upon how you use it or if you want to add an upstairs room above it. It also depends on whether you need more room or do not want to add to the size of the house. Something to consider, budget permitting, of course: Add height to the exterior walls of the lower structure ( raising the ceiling of the space and/or adding an upstairs).