I agree it would help to know your zone. Also, my strong suggestion is ammend your soil with compost or manure. I find topsoil doesn't do anything to help plants thrive. Some ideas: Abelia are nice and evergreen with PINK flowers. Some varieties are prettier than others and some are fragrant, too. I'd plant 3 of them along the brick wall in a not perfect row - sort of curved. A few low growing knock out roses scattered in front of the abelia. (Depending on what type of maintence you want you can do old garden roses too) Then possibly a juniper type ground cover. I'd space your agapantha out and add more so they make the curve. You can also add some annual color at the edge. This space can be beauitful but please consider improving your soil. If it gets enough shade and the soil is good hydrangea would do well there but they are bare in the winter so you might want to inter plant with something evergreen. Do gardenia grow well there? In my previous home I had a row of gardenia and at the end a HUGE 20 year old hydrangea and they were great together. If you're in the cooler area hosta would also look nice, especially as an edger. Sunny

Lighting is one of this week's rotating renovation obsessions, so I understand your dilemma. I made an appointment with a lighting designer at a good sized local lighting store last week ($75 for an hour, which I think was money well spent), so that might be an option for you if you live in a place where that's available, as I found it really helpful. Soft, incandescent-like dimming is a goal for me too, and I know that most LEDs just get dimmer rather than also getting warmer like good old "real" bulbs. Satco, however, makes warm dimming bulbs, and Juno has warm dimming housings. I haven't actually seen either of them, so I can't comment on how they look, and there may be others out there too, but that's an option you might want to throw into the mix (even though we're supposed to be clarifying things, not making them more complicated!) Let us know what you decide and how you like it. I keep wishing there were ONE easy area, but I haven't found it so far.

Thank you so much for the comments! Yes, I researched the lutron Caseta Wireless and it is fantastic! Steve I understand where you are coming from, but in my situation where I wasn't around much for our build (I have a demanding seasonal job in Nebraska) i wasn't able to specify some things. Although, as my wife put it, a lot of it seemed to be common sense (like only having one location to turn on our great room lights and its in a corner, along with two other situations that are similar. In this situation, the areas where wire would need to be run would require ruining a lot of freshly painted drywall. The lutron caseta doesn't require a smart hub it can work stand alone with the provided pico remote, but if you want bells and whistles and want to control it with the lutron smart app or apple home kit (yes i tell siri to dim the lights for me) than you can with the purchase of lutrons smart bridge for 79.99 more. The in wall dimmer switch with remote is $60, smart bridge $80, or bundles together for $100. https://www.amazon.com/Lutron-Wireless-Lighting-Starter-P-BDG-PKG2W/dp/B01M3XJUAD/ref=sr_1_3?s=hi&ie=UTF8&qid=1516080745&sr=1-3&keywords=lutron+smart+bridge

Yes, as far as I can tell all wires run through the one junction box. I suppose I should probably just open that up and get a closer look. found a picture, albeit a bad one, of the “unknown” fixture that was connected to the hanging Wires in my initial photo. This would be what I’m guessing fed power to the lights. I really have no idea tho. We controlled the lights using a switch so im really not sure what function this served, if any.