I love 60s ranches! Ours is built on a sloped lot, so we actually have a full walkout basement, but from the front it looks like just a one-story ranch. Anyway, how energetic are you feeling? We used to have a concrete walk that ran straight from the drive to the house like yours. We took it up and put in a flagstone walk that begins down closer to the street and curves in an 's' shape to the door. That gave me the opportunity to plant on both sides of the walk and gave us a very pretty and much more interesting entrance. We also have shade and acid soil. I have some sun in the morning over the low roof, so I keep trying cone flowers and I have a peony which is really healthy, but only get a couple of blooms each spring. They aren't fabulous, but they are surviving and the gold finches are all over the cone flowers now. Most of what I have is shade loving, though. I have hosta, azaleas, one camellia (had two, but moved one and killed it-alas), hellebores (a favorite b/c they are evergreen), liriope (also evergreen), heuchera (evergreen), astilbe, dicentra, brunnera, impatiens-annuals for summer color, cimicifuga, asarum europaen(European ginger-evergreen and really pretty ground cover for filling in around other plants)and I had tiarella (foam flower) and lamium (dead nettle), but they died. To keep costs down, check with neighbors. I got some hellebores from a friend whose plants had spread too much, people may be dividing hosta now or in the spring, and you may have neighbors who can share the liriope. I don't like the look of a walk entirely bordered by any one thing, so I have hosta, liriope, heuchera, hellebores, etc. interspersed along the border and in the bed. It makes for a nice mix of leaf shapes and textures. The astilbe will spread if you keep it moist, and tiarella and lamium spread, too, but slowly in my garden (after which it died-about as slow as you can get, I guess!!!). If there is a local garden club, join it. You will find people with lots of ideas and also, plants to share! Good luck. Have fun!

I did lots of thinking on this and came up with this non-constructive thought. If you were to want to sell you home, you would probably ask some real estate agents for proposals (price, their way of marketing, commission, etc.). Once you determined which one you want to represent you and home, the agent will take some pictures as part of the marketing (mostly online anymore). The agent is looking out for you, but also seeking the sale. If the agent believes that something is not right with the photo taken, then you would have a tendency to listen. A real estate agent is not an artist, nor a landscape person, but a good one will have seen lots of homes and knows what works and what doesn't. Stand at the curb. Take a picture, walk to the left and right several paces and take more pictures. Walk up the drive a bit and take pictures, not just of the house, but the view from the house. What would you want to do if you were thinking about buying your home? Now for some other comments: You have many horizontal lines on the actual house. The windows and doors are rectangle. All of that is very typical. Your yard counters that look a bit, but it also moves the eye in an awkward manner. You need to negate that. In your first photo, it appears that the house is leaning because of all that. I concur on getting rid of all that grows between the current walkway and the house. I concur that you ought to not have a straight line walk to replace it. My suggestion to balance the overall look would be to create a small berm on the left side, about 20' out from the house. Nothing large, but something that would break up that falling away appearance. In the first photo, there is lots of shade coming from the left side, I'll assume that there are some tall trees there. I'm a big promoter of color in the front yard; something that complements the colors of the house. Some might think it trite, but a burning bush on the berm would look good as the leaves are changing color this time of year. Those can be pruned to shape or let it go. I would also include blooming perennials that show different colors throughout the year. Poppies might work, as might some Veronica. There are many, many options for that kind of thing. Jim

Landscaping will do a lot to improve the curb appeal. The beds by the front door aren't very deep, but you could do some beautiful accents in front of the garage windows and to the right of the home. I feel like the windows could use some trim or modern style shutters. Nice all brick home. Landscaping is the key.

Figure out a way to work in a citrus tree. Even if you are not so crazy about citrus, it’s a selling point to anyone from Back East or Canada. Totally appropriate for that kind of house, too. i recommend a blood orange tree, as offering a relatively high value crop. kumquat is the same and has the advantage of being an excellent ornamental.