You're near Houston? Clay soil? Can you be a little more specific about sun and shade in this area? How "different" do you want to be? Are you ok with yearly trimming, or do you want something that requires no attention? How much water are you willing to give these plants?

You could do knockout roses.

My house faces north too and I planted lots of roses and annuals.

Without knowing some of the information whitecap brought up, my first thought would be to go native and go with the toughest plants on the natives list. I'm in DFW but just finished planting evergreen foundation shrubs last fall to serve as the "bones" of my flowerbed.

One suggestion (although not a Texas native) would be Wheeler's Dwarf Pittosporum. They only grow about 2-3 feet high and a bit wider. They're evergreen with a low, rounded, mounding and spreading growth habit and lovely shrubs. They survived the freezes we had in DFW and can take the heat as well. I only covered them when we were expecting ice but the other freezes, I didn't cover them. They've made it through with only slight damage to the tender new growth. I also find dwarf nandina really pretty as well as glossy abelia and Edward Goucher abelia. All evergreen, all fairly small at mature size (except the glossy abelia, which gets about 4 to 6 feet). I have these in my flowerbed and consider them pretty tough since they're planted in alkaline clay soil and have survived this weird winter we just had.