Selection of evergreens depends mostly on what you have available, if you are going to buy locally. Otherwise you can mail order but you have to do a heck of a lot of research to figure out what to order and where to get it. So for plant selection, your best bet is to visit your local nurseries and look around, buy what you like, and then arrange it to please you when you get home. You can always leave space for more shopping trips later in the season as nurseries get new stock all spring and summer, sometimes also in fall. If you don't like just shrubs, of course you can augment them with perennials, but I do agree a shrub presence is called for beside the garage. Perhaps you'll come to enjoy and appreciate shrubs once they are in the right places. As for your front door, I think your layout is very cool, very convenient and frankly more attractive than seeing the garage door from the street. The little garden beds the driveway leaves you can be filled with a better selection of plants and would be quite attractive. Because the porch is dark I suspect it will be most pleasant if you keep the plants in front of it low, and having perennials there will give you something to watch change over the seasons as you come and go. What you do to the right of the door depends on how much work you want: The least work is extending the grass all the way in, or you can have garden all the way along the house. There I also think what matters most is what you want to see when you come home or hang out in the yard. Deciduous shrubs will only work if you prune them as you would with coloured twig dogwoods, as most will lean out from the house toward the light. Evergreen plants do this less (and conifers least of all) but I don't see that you need a lot of bulk there, so a perennial garden wouldn't be the worst thing there either. You probably get snow in winter and have to clear the driveway so a garden alongside it that goes dormant might not be the worst thing at all. KarinL

Sort of repeating what others are saying here, but wonder how you feel about retaining walls? Also, how aware are you of the drainage issues? It sounds like this might be a new home? What has the builder done to insure that water flowing down that slope won't be a problem for your home? Also, I disagree with Ronbre. Not about the drainage concern, but about just handling that before you think about landscaping. Heavens, that is a part of the whole landscaping process. If you throw in a French drain and then decide you need the retaining wall Well, itÂs a classic example of why one needs to make a careful comprehensive plan for your property before you put in an fd or go out looking for plants. The spacing seems problematic to me, but I can imagine a higher and lower tier to your property, divided by a retaining wall. Such a wall can be extremely lovely, but if it were designed in your space, it would be more important for its function of protecting your home. Each "tier" of your yard that the retaining wall would create would be more or less level. The lower level -- though virtually flat -- would be properly graded with a slope away from the foundation. If possible, this wall would follow the contours of your property or would be designed to look as though it does. Steps would need to be designed to allow for access to the sidewalk / mailbox. The frentch drain  which, by the way, is a sort of artificial underground stream bed, often not visible at the surface -- would be at the base of the retaining wall some 10 to 12 feet ? from your foundation. Cost? Not cheap. I have no clue if thatÂs what your situation needs, but addressing the significant negative slope toward your home is at least as high a priority as screening for privacy and planting for shade. ThatÂs where doing tons of background research on the landscape design process is needed to help make sure you arenÂt missing something. The cool thing is that once you are clear about what has to be achieved in your front yard design in order for you to be happy, certain solutions will start working together. If, after youÂve considered the worse gully washer that could happen, you decide that some sort of drainage work needs to be done, then whatever choice you make about it could also work with other objectives. I can imagine, for instance, a retaining wall enhancing the sense of shelter. Paying for it? Ah, thereÂs the rub. But if you know what your dream front yard needs to be, then you might be able to work toward achieving it. Hope so. Wellspring

Yes. You do. Wish everyone would show up here with a base plan as it would make giving clear feedback much easier. My picture alludes to their being larger trees farther out from the house, as in street trees. Some of these may already exist, but if not, they could be useful for the overall picture you're creating.

Deepen the beds front to back and on the left side, I'd swing the bed out at the corner and plant a small tree. Small is the key word here. We don't know where you are, but in my zone it might be a Viburnum prunifolium, Red Bud, or Serviceberry. Low plantings would connect it to the house.