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Well, this being the landscape design forum, we tend to focus on the overall design and not on the specific plant selections, though some suggestions may be forthcoming. But overall, plant suggestions are best found at your local nursery, because the key issue is often what you can buy. We can suggest plants until we're blue, but if you can't get them, it was all for nought. For me, there are too many wrong plants here for me to have too many thoughts yet of what the right plants might be. The tree on the left that appears to be planted about 4 inches from the house is a real detractor from anything else that might be good about the garden. The lilacs are, as you point out, too big for their space too, to the extent that they shut in your front door. And the rugosa roses might be good for the time they're in bloom, but they are rather limited interest, shapeless blobby things to be the keystone of your house's presentation to the public. When you use deciduous plants for front yard landscaping (as opposed to for screening or whatever their other attributes are), the best ones to use are those that have some attraction other than bloom such as nice foliage shape or colour, or some specific form attribute that makes them attractive year-round. These all have undistinguished foliage and form. I don't know if the roses bloom for long enough to be worth their space. Even if they do, for my taste you don't have enough structure from evergreen forms to offset their random shape. I don't know if you've stuck with the previous owners' plantings because you like them, or if you haven't thought of making more dramatic changes, but I'd do some shovel pruning here if I were you, and look for new shrubs before I worried too much about the little flowers. The perfect jewelry won't offset an ugly, ill-fitting dress. KarinL

It sounds as if you are really starting from scratch if you don't know how to edge a bed. Get thee to the library and get some books out that explain how to plant, how to maintain, and how to design landscapes. How-to landscaping books don't always have a lot of pictures of nice installed landscapes, but some do, and many of the magazines do. Books about garden style, without the how-to part will have better pictures, see if your library has books by well known landscape designers and architects or if they can get them for you. Some libraries archive magazines and will dig them out for you, so it pays to ask if they have copies of Garden Design or Horticulture magazine. Start looking for pictures of front gardens that you like that have homes similar in style to yours. If you start buying magazines, you can rip out the pages and save them in a folder. This may be better than driving around the neighborhood, because you may only have DIY designs that are so-so to look at there. Once you have collected some that you like, try to figure out what it is that you like about them. They will have something in common. They may have a lot of color, or little color but a lot of textured foliage with a more serene look. They may look cottage-y or mimimalist or whatever. They may be mostly lawn or have very little. They may be shady and cool looking, or sunny and bright. They may have a lot of warm colors, or mostly cool. Straight lines or curves. Make a list of what it is you think attracts you to them, and how they make you feel, and refer to that list every time you are going to make a decision about your own plan. If the idea you have is not "in tune" with the goal of your design, don't use it. You can use plants that will cascade over the edges of your raised bed and hide it. Microbiota comes to mind, there are others. Once the edges are hidden (do it on paper first) you can incorporate it into a larger bed that ignores it completely, using additional small shrubs and perennials. At this point you can use a curved bed or straight, whatever you prefer. If you can manage to remove the ties, you should be able to plant some small shrubs that will camoflage the eyesores without having to build anything around them. I don't see why you'd necessarily need a berm, either, unless the soil is too shallow there to support plants.

We would like sone ideas on what to plant in front of our house foundations Any ideas would be helpfull