Hello from Vermont! Zone 4b/ 5a

I'm usually pretty good at landscape design, but this space just has me scratching my head. There is a grassy area surrounded by rock retaining walls on three sides that is the focal point when you turn into our driveway- hereby referred to as "the Area". We been here 2 years and it has been boring at best, eyesore at worst. I planted some melons there just to do something with it this year, but it's not the ideal location for an annual garden. Mowing it is a pain and again, boring.

We have two dwellings on our property- the building with the solar panels is the "apartment" and our house has the two car garage. As you can see from the apartment view (from the bottom of the incline) the Area does make visual sense with symmetry at the rock stairs. But, from the top of the driveway and from our house, the evergreens to the right (which provide good privacy and we definitely want to keep) block the other side of the masonry retaining wall and so you're left with the Area feeling like a peninsula jutting out for no discernible reason. It has a dead-end kind of feeling, not good. We're going to extend our driveway a bit, the edge of which is indicated by the metal pole, so we can have one parking space that doesn't block our garage. Other than that, I just don't know how to make this space feel well-thought out and intentional.

Again we're in Vermont, zone 4a/ 5b. We're into homesteading and growing as many edibles as possible. Split rail fence with grapes has crossed my mind. Lavender? Fruit trees? Changing the rock wall so this area doesn't feel like a dead end? What would you do?