No mulch? At least in a new garden, you will either be doing a large amount of weeding or herbicide or need mulch while the plants fill in. So consider an organic, brown mulch that will blend in such as compost, chopped leaves, or shredded bark until plants get large enough to no longer need it.
Pavers to edge garden beds works well for me, especially if used with a buried edging. Mower wheels can run along the pavers to save edging with a strimmer, and the buried edging helps keep out plants with creeping roots like many lawn grasses.
Do you use all the paving? Right now, half your yard is paved, and if you don’t use all of it for parking on a regular basis, I would convert some of it to grass or other plants. Particularly with this arrangement, not even a remote suggestion of symmetry is possible. If pavement removal isn’t in the cards, consider adding the largest planter you can fit in front of the porch.
Because of the low window placement, I would not do a foundation planting of anything other than a flowering groundcover with perhaps some spring flowering bulbs. Add an evergreen shrub off the left corner of the house to hide the utilities on the side, making sure that is is chosen for ultimate size to not exceed the space.
Remove the stump and accompanying daylilies, stockpiling the daylilies for later reuse if they are attractive. Plan a bed that will stretch across the front of the property to include the magnolia currently there. Make it at least 5’ deep so you have room for plants to provide a long season of interest.
Most full sun perennials require considerably more work than low shrubs to stay looking good. Do you like working in the garden, deadheading, dividing, etc.? If not plan to use low shrubs such as small panicled hydrangeas like Bobo, small Hydrangea serrata such as Tuff Stuff, one of the many low spireas, small cultivars of red twigged dogwood like Kelseyii, etc. with just a few low maintenance perennials.
Evergreen plants are really useful in bumping up a home’s appeal during the 5 months of gray and white weather, whether groundcovers such as Veronica Georgia Blue or shrubs such as false cypress or birds nest spruce. Without them, the yard will look quite stark from November to at least March. Consider placing at least some where you can appreciate looking at them from inside the house and enjoy the snow on them.
Since you like birds, consider adding a heated bird bath to attract them in winter and some small trees or large shrubs limbed up to tree form to give them perching and nest sites. If they have berries, all the better. A small crab apple might work well. This chart has several that stay within your desired 3 meters and have good to excellent disease resistance.
https://www.jfschmidt.com/pdfs/JFS_CRAB_CHART.pdf
Use either hulled seed or place your feeders where they won’t be dropping onto gardens or lawn. Sunflower seed hulls have an allopathic chemical that keeps other plants from growing, and often seeds will sprout in garden beds, adding to weeding.
Fountains require both power and a water source, so consider whether that will be practical.
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Sea Thrift - filler
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