Visit a small garden center to come up with a shade gardening plan to the left--extending out the left bed with foundation plants and adding a slate walkway to tie in with your gray roof. The house itself is fine, but a curved walkway with garden bad to the side would lead visitors to your door. Picture this kind of front but with your large tree, pathway bordering your driveway.

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Can I spend your money? I can see this tree bench around your tree and on the other side a garage door in the same wood finish.

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Don't hide the side facing entrance with more foundation plants when you do install you new plantings. You could add some plantings under the bay window. Don't plant close to the foundation. Allow at least a foot of separation between the edge of the plant and the side of the house at maturity. You might want to do a flower bed to the right the driveway. It is something you'll see every day.

Two comments above have most of it. Are you going to park where that car is now? If so, maybe add a zone of pavers there so that you're not just destroying grass all the time. If not, then a bed along the right side of the drive will be the main/only place you can do sun/part sun plantings, which includes most of the flowers, so I'd make the most of it.

Also, do what you can to emphasize the entrance -- keep plantings low, paint your front door a bright color, maybe put a brightly colored planter right next to the step or a hanging basket of flowers from the overhang to draw the eye. A clear walkway will help too.

I might have put your door in the wrong place since I could not see where it was. Plants alone cannot fix your hidden entrance.

I hope one of the pros can give you a better image than this.

Can you add updated pictures with the shrubs gone? wide views, please.

We need current photos of the situation today and we need to see the front door. Replace the mailbox for sure!

Sorry, but I think the hedging in the middle of the yard looks ridiculous.

Changing the entry way would make a significant change- I am not sure if it would work as picture only provides a side view but expand the front entrance area to be the whole area with pavers and a larger overhang , add a little sitting area. It seems that if a car is parked right on front of the garage one would have to walk on the grass to get to the front door (not very inviting and probably a mud tracking problem) so have the walkway into the house added next to the drive way

I don't see anything ridiculous about an entry courtyard. I would suggest answering the OP's question rather than criticizing others.

The attitude to hedges must be a cultural thing. It looks like a million British front gardens. We like to feel private rather than exposed to public gaze.

No dissin' Dig Doug, a professional landscape designer par excellence! Really, what use are most large front lawns? His idea is to solve the problem the OP asked about and provide a wonderful space to relax and have a bit of privacy as well. Look at all these Houzz pics that do the same with fencing to break up lawn:

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Here's a pathway that breaks up what might otherwise might be boring lawn.

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I agree with housann. Don’t plant tall stuff near your front door, between the door and the street. Typically people want their front door to seem open and welcoming (no offense meant to those across the pond).

With apologies to the original poster bmccoy5, but criticizing ideas is part of the solution, and as long as the criticism is directed toward the idea rather than a personal attack, it is fair game. There are pros here who don’t label themselves as such as well as a couple of folks (and not including Doug) who labeled themselves as pros who clearly weren’t. And there are pro kitchen designers who make comments on landscaping that aren’t necessarily practical in the outdoor world, so being able to add criticism is part of finding a solution that works for the question at hand. I frequently make critical comments about Doug’s designs as well as pointing out things that I think will work well in any given situation.

In this case, a hedge isn’t a practical solution in this yard due to the large tree. A hedge close to the tree, if it survives at all, will be patchy and won’t match well with parts of the hedge with different light and moisture levels due to not being under the tree canopy, so IMO allowing anyone to believe differently is doing a disservice to the poster who wants to improve the yard’s appearance. I personally have no problem aesthetically with dividing a large front yard to make a part of the yard a more private space, but it this case it will need to be a fence such as the pickets above rather than a hedge or a masonry wall which won’t play well with extensive tree roots so that either the tree or the wall will suffer.

I agree with the posters who suggested that having tall plants hiding the side facing main entry isn’t a good idea. I like finding the entry easily, and I dislike approaching entries swathed in foliage for safety reasons. I also agree with the suggestion to widen the pavement on the dooryard side to add a longer walkway at least a couple of cars deep. It will make the entry more visible, and when cars are parked in the drive it will add a firm dry walking surface for visitors.

Like Yardvaark, I would love to see how the house looks currently as well as what is to either side of the photos above, so added photos would be good. Is that odd looking bed edging still there? And what is meant by “stone along the side” of the driveway? Gravel? Cobblestone or other masonry edging?

Babs I really do not agree with your opinion on what is & is not practical. What you are saying is simply an opinion. You apparently have not seen the many beautiful & successful landscapes in other regions of the country that look like what I rendered. I do not want to debate the subject. I simply do not agree with blanket statements saying something is ridiculous or impractical when that is clearly not the case.

I have spent time in all regions of the country except the PNW. I know of nowhere that a newly planted hedge will do well under a large established tree due the root competition involved. Likewise, a hedge of all the same plant grown partly in shade and partly in sun will not grow evenly. This isn’t opinion, but is based on both training and observation.

My views on how to deal with the dooryard area . . . that is opinion.

Babs, I guess we are going to have to agree to disgree.

Now, now, kids, how about splitting the difference with a fence perhaps instead of a hedge and plantings that will grow well in shadier conditions. But the basic idea of using landscaping to cut down on the mass of house is a good one.

Entry courtyard is an excellent solution.