"This front is just a mess." That is your first impression. I suggest you live with it for a few months before doing anything. Surely you will change it, but you don't yet know what it's like to live with the existing garden. The experience of it may shift your understanding slightly. mad_gallica said "you have Sun Ra but you want Bach" -- maybe. But maybe you don't know what you have or what you want. Give it time to sink in. What's the rush. No film crew coming, is there? There are philosophies that result in what someone has carefully planned and built in what is now your front garden. It may not be your philosophy, and that's fine, but just "try it on" and spend some time in those "clothes." Then you will come to know not only what you don't want, but you will know WHY and you may even know what you DO want, and why. I don't see it as a maze, but someone in a big hurry undoubtedly sees it that way. In some gardens, indirect paths or spirals are made for meditation or for giving the inhabitant a few extra seconds in the day to smell the roses, or in other words, to appreciate the peaceful feeling a walk through greenery can bring. With combined families, whose garden is it, anyway? ;) Last comment -- when entering the house, you may find you never use the front door, but enter through the garage. If you entertain a lot, a meditation front garden may not be quite the thing. But don't be too hasty. Live with it for a time.

Suezbell Thank you. very good suggestions. I will definitely add another walkway -that makes sense and I never thought of that. It could easily be done with flagstone or something. Another struggle is between the house and the existing sidewalk it is such a small area. It may be too small for anything other than flowers so having a multilayer of landscaping would allow me to still put in some boxwoods or something still. I'm trying to picture the porch in front as you mentioned. It's not a bad idea. We actually have a large shared pond in back with most of our acreage being in front and side (like a piece of pie shape). We have 5 little children so we keep the play set and trampoline in front of the house, volleyball net on the side... Not ideal but keeps them safe away from the water. We have a beautiful view in the back yard with large windows and a nice screened in back porch. Just need to bring some beauty to the front of the house. Great ideas. Thank you heres is a pic of the house from the end of our driveway.

The bushes do not need to just be pruned down. They need to be pared down such that they do not look like a freighter ready to steam off toward the left. And end undercutting so lower foliage could be kept. They could be dome, not a ball. It could be difficult to recreate into a nice form without a hole or scar as some at left side need to be entirely removed. "I plan landscaping the sides of the sidewalk with something low maintenance." Well, that in and of itself is not a low maintenance idea. At this point we don't know what the "something" is, but if it has much of any height, it's going to make the entry experience substantially less appealing, and the drive by experience less appetizing. Lining the walk with Liriope would be an example of adding negativity. It would be creating a raised edge that shrinks the apparent walk size and divides it from the larger path (lawn) with a trip hazard.

One could not know how to reshape the bed by looking at half of it, or seeing it at an angle from a distance. Return to where you took the first picture. Move in closer but where you can see the whole first floor of house and the lawn. (You'll be standing on the parkway or near edge of walk. OK to turn the camera to vertical format.) Take a panoramic picture by using that feature of the camera or by taking slightly overlapping pictures. Show every square in the of yard space that is between both drives. (We'll also be seeing your right neighbor's house in the background.) Normally, the clean-out pipes are cut off flush to the ground surface. I don't know if there's anything about your area that requires different, but that's the reason you don't see them elsewhere. Do all the yards there have these things sticking up like that?