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

Here are a few ideas-- 1.Widen the walkway with bricks on either side that match the house and take out the grass from between the walk and house and make it part of the bed. 2.Have all plants in front of the windows be lower that the windows. Go to a nursery and look at what is available that you like. Ground cover in front of the shrubs and annuals or something very short in front of the stoop. Matching planters on the stoop on either side of the door. 3.Black shutters on the windows on the brick end of the house would help unify both 'parts' of the house.

The most recent photo makes it look closer to city walk than first pictures alludes to. If you would, take the foundation planting pictures from the front/center position while standing on the city walk. All pictures must be taken from exact same location, pivoting camera. Do not change the camera position between photos. Please give a full 180* sweep of slightly overlapping photos (street will show in first and last photo.) And then also take the separate distance picture from across the street.

I would keep the deck, your window layout may look a bit weird without it there. My eye didn't go to your front door immediately, so I would put plants along your new sidewalk. Since it seems you get a lot of shade (and I don't know where you live), I would ask the local gardening store what may look good and would be green year round. Boxwoods get pretty big but they are a hearty plant. I would also check out Home & Garden online, they have some great ideas for pathway planting for both annuals and perennials. I would edge the walkway with plants, put two tall pots to flank the front door and I would also consider hanging some ferns or other greenery under your deck.