Here are a few more photos. The ones with black
Paint are the most current.

That's an awful lot of asphalt. How many cars do you need to park and how wide does the driveway truly need to be?

Because the garage is perpendicular to the house it has to be this way to turn in

I should find a further away picture, there is actually lots of grass, just not visible from this angle. It doesn’t look as ‘hard’ as it appears here

The Google photo looks four cars wide. Couldn't you reduce it to two cars wide?

It won’t let me add another photo but the section on the left is the double car garage so we need to be able to get in and park in there. I could be reduced marginally by maybe 5 feet? It woulda make a huge difference

Wouldn’t *

I'm carping on this because the pavement looks cracked and worn. If you're going to repair or remove the planter and redo the asphalt, it would be a chance to reconfigure it. Any green that you can add back will be an improvement.

Yes the pavement does need some work! If it does get all replaced then it would maybe be possible to carve out more of a corner over by the retaining wall near the house and make a larger bed there. I would just need to back out of the driveway differently but it could still work. When driving by from the street there are two large trees that provide some green visually. I took the pictures at an angle from the end of the driveway to show as much house as possible

One thing I like about the planter is it gives a long, level baseline for plants, rather than your slope. I'd try to keep it, or reconstruct something similar. It doesn't look like you have enough width there to do shrubs, so plant it with soft/easy perennials like the decorative switchgrasses (the shorter ones, not the taller varieties), rudbeckia, shorter goldenrods, etc. Cut them all to the ground in spring just before growing season -- simple.

The shrubs along the side of the drive look like they might be nice to keep, just need a little weeding. I don't know about adding a fence behind them. If you keep most of them a fence would not be visually necessary.

I like a nice generous landing. Could yours be extended out along the house, maybe to just beyond the first set of windows? Looks like you can't go out into the drive much, or you'd interfere with cars using the garage.

For paint colors, I like a nice bright front door. Just about any color would work for yours. I also like it when the garage doors and side doors are painted to blend in rather than stand out. So I'd choose a medium tan-ish color. Again, let the front door be the thing that draws the eye, not the garage doors or side door.

Lafayette · More Info

Its funny, my house is similar to yours- i love the black- but go all the way and paint the fascia too. I have the same planter as well- yours can't be repaired? I wonder why it failed? Mine has gardenias which don't have aggressive roots, I added a drip system so they get watered (I have deep eves that go over the planter- stupid design but its been that way for seventy years...) Whatever you do whether you keep the planter or just have a bed, I would do one consistent planting type to emphasize the horizontal nature of the house, versus a mixed 'english' border.

Your house looks great! The plants that were in the planter were still vet grown and not cared for. The whole front of the planter is angled out and cracking. We may be able to repair it though, I will have to get someone to look at it and see. I had thought about painting the soffit/gutters and facia, I love it on your house!

You've done a lot of work- removing the grids and shutters makes it look so much better!