Can you take a picture that includes the whole front facade of the house? All I see now are bits and pieces that don't make much sense. Do you know what year your house was built in?

Ok I'll try to take some better pictures this afternoon. but the house is in Denver from 1908.

I would start by painting that porch floor. then you need to now what is in there

I think that the manufactured block retaining walls out front should go. These look dated, seem to be of poor quality, and probably will fail over time. Natural stone retaining walls with a mortared core and proper drainage behind them would probably look the best but are much more expensive to build than these manufactured units.....There are much more attractive and properly engineered manufactured concrete products on the market today than when your walls were probably built. I would recommend going to unilock.com or belgard.com and click on there wall links to see what is available. You will see that these types of manufactured walls have come a long way in the past 10 years. If you want to see some of the natural stone walls we build, you can check out our web site.

In regards to the soft scaping..... I would strongly recommend working with a qualified landscape designer to design this space. They will choose the proper plants for your space taking into account size, flowering times, foliage textures, light requirements, and soil conditions required by the plant. It is key to pick the right plant for the right space! If this is done properly you can have an almost maintenance free garden with great color, textures and forms all year long.

the retaining wall block looks to be big box home improvement store garbage. There are no cap stones which is contributing to its poor appearance. The bigger issue is structural: you can see in photo #2 where the upper wall (2 rows of block) appears to be tipping forward, and you can see gaps and offsets from poor workmanship elsewhere on the wall. If the wall *is* built from box store block, they're only intended for 24" max garden walls. Assuming the concrete steps are between 6" - 7.5" risers, you're holding back 30-40" with that wall? No bueno.

Do I think the wall is going to fail tomorrow? Probably not, but you'll want to be aware that replacement of the wall at some point is likely. If the wall isn't in the budget at this point the planting design will need to account for future demo and replacement. I would suggest finding a good local designer to come up with a plan, it's going to save you money in the long run.

I don't think the wall is going anywhere. If you can't or don't want to replace it, I would choose plants that cascade down a bit and soften the top edges.

You might think about painting the steps the same color as the wooden stairs. And I think new handrails that porch rails would really look nice too.

Are you thinking of changing the green perhaps?