I'm assuming, given your location, that the elevated front door is part of flood damage avoidance...? I'm curious about what kind of wall is behind the ground floor siding. (I don't have anything really to say about your front garden design; given some familiarity I have with flooding in a differnt context, I'm curious to see how approaches differ in different conditions.... I spent a summer in my university days boarding at a farm that was located on a flood plain. Every spring their farm, and neighbouring farms, were completely flooded when the river overflowed its banks during the thawing of the winter snow pack. Their house was surrounded on three sides by a wide, one-story deep earth bank/berm. On the fourth side it was open to ground level and the basement (which was really at ground level) wall had a huge set of double doors. The cattle barn was also built into an earth bank with a ramped area leading to the second floor hayloft and secondary stable. As the river started to rise in the spring, they stocked up on food and water, tied a boat and a canoe up to the back door, moved the cattle up a level into the hayloft area, and opened the double doors into the basement. When the river rose, they let the basement flood and used the canoe to get to the barn to tend to the cattle and the boat to get to dry ground if they needed to go to town. Letting the water in equalized water pressure so there was less chance of the water collapsing the walls (that's why I wonder what kind of wall is behind the siding - reinforced concrete...?). When the river subsided, there was a big clean-up required of course but the ground level areas were kept pretty bare so it was fairly easy to clear the silt out. Since this was a northern area, ice was an issue too as the flood waters generally froze over; when the water drained out underneath, the remaining ice was heavy enough to drive fence posts totally into the ground! So every fall all the fence posts were removed and every spring they were replaced! The flood water brought rich silt/soil with it so the land was very productive - once it dried out and the mess was cleared up! So that was why they continued to live there even though they knew they were going to have to cope with the work created by the floods every year.) You must have goine through some interesting decision making in deciding to rebuild and in deciding what and how to rebuild. It might not be garden related, but it would be design related, so I, for one, would be very interested in hearing about the design decisions you've made to get to this point....

What makes you think the roses are gonners? Maybe i can't see from the pictures but what i do see is they are not doing as well as the other big one but they dont look dead to me...they have nice green foliage on them and appear healthy, but maybe they just appear that way in the photo. It seems where the large one is there are not alot of flowers around it, but the two that are not doing well seem to have alot of flowers around it and maybe it is not getting what it needs with all that is in there. I don't know i am a far cry from a expert, guess i just hate to see a rose bush bite the dust...my husband would have a million if we could he loves them! I am probably gonna catch three kinds of hades, but i think i would remove everything but the rose bushes in that particular bed, you can plant elsewhere or give them away if your not gonna use them. Then i would plant a perennial toward the front in between the first and second and the second and third roses...one that has a nice circular uniform shape and maintains it...you said virtually maintenance free right? If it were me i would plant a few hosta's there but when i have suggested that in the past there have been people that said they can't imagine them growing in the same area...but i do mine and my hosta's are huge and my roses flourish...i am in indiana though and it may make a huge difference as to where you are.

For a colonial, I prefer bluestone. If you're in a freeze/thaw climate and you use salt to deice, I'd be worried about limestone. Here's an example of a bluestone porch and stair treads:

Much better pictures. I would remove the AC screen and return to the smaller, neutral colored, original version. Screening it only makes an out-of-place thing grow larger. I think if you plant better in the area, it will seem less obtrusive. Then, when it craps out in some future year, you can finally have it relocated to the side of the house. The garden at the middle of yard does not work to distract from any other thing that you don't want looked at. Instead, it seems more like an impediment to better seeing an inviting entrance. I would opt for blank, clean lawn instead. The tree that's in the island might could stay. I don't know if it's a good tree and can't evaluate its placement based on the pictures we have so far. (It would need to be a picture from a distance showing the whole front yard all the way to the street.) If it remains as a tree in the lawn, you would want to remove its lower branches as it grows and keep a nice single trunk all the way to the bottom of the finished canopy. (Instead of letting it branch helter-skelter and become an ugly trunk.) I like the idea of some evergreens to screen the side of the house to the left and help place a limit on your yard. (That is, if you have room for them. It's kind of hard to tell.) The rest is tidying up and simplifying the foundation planting. Right now, there are too many odds and ends one-offs doing their own thing. It needs some cohesion. Also, I'd eliminate the plantings at the near side of the walk and bring the lawn all the way to the walk. The plants there are like a barricade and they don't help the entrance to seem inviting. I can't say what the individual shrubs in the illustration are. They are whatever that grows there that would best do that. I think the little tree at the left corner of the house is an overgrown shrub ... like beautybush or something. Below the largest bank of windows, the depth of bed will determine to some extent what shrub will fit there. The groundcover near the AC needs to come up to the bottom of the two windows, but not higher. The rest are perennials. At the steps could be annuals or perennials. All the details you will work out in a measured plan view (looking straight down from above.) With a small tree added to the right side: