Hi guys -

I've been reading through lots of GREATguidance and advice you've given other landscape/gardening newbies and I'm hoping you might be able to help me with my front yard - I'm desperate!

Long story short, we bought a 1970s house 2 years ago that had been sitting empty for over a year. We've slowly been able to bring the lawn back, and the landscaping has good structural "bones" (curved beds, an "island" in the center of the front yard, a beautiful Japanese maple and a [albeit, moping this year] yucca which I love). But we had some very awful, overgrown, dying bushes all around the foundation. So with a sudden fit of determination, I pulled (almost all of) them out and decided to start fresh. It helped that several sets of neighbors were so relieved at our efforts that they came running over with chainsaws and shovels and helped rid the neighborhood of the eyesore as fast as humanly possible.

The newly-empty foundational beds in the front made my British inlaws anxious when they came to visit, so they went out and bought a few plants from the local Big Box store and stuck them in the ground. I'm grateful for the gesture... but most have died. I believe they had actually planted an indoor fern out in the full-sun bed, and the Russian sage and small shrubs that were planted against the front of the house are slowly making their way towards death (I suspect they don't get enough sun where they are). Side note about the island bed - there were two hostas which I swear were 1/10 the size last year... and then this year, they exploded. I bought several others to place in the bed, but the size difference is huge. I also worry that they get too much sun this summer (I live in New Jersey, and we get regular summer days in the 90s -- but then winters with below-freezing temperatures for weeks at a time) and will burn.

If I can be honest -- I'm very new to gardening, so I tend to murder things before they have the chance to go very far - mostly out of ignorance (I have a habit of both over- and under-watering... and I never know which actually killed the plant).

We do have a sprinkler system, which waters the beds on average every other day, so I'm hoping that will be a better, more regular source of watering than my sudden, desperate fits of irrigational panic. Last year, I did plant some partial-shade annuals along the walkway bed and they did great all summer long.

I'm looking for an approach that provides four-season interest (last year's attempt at landscaping resulted in some gorgeous flowers for all of two months, and then quick death and barren beds for the remainder of the year) with some visual interest. I'll include in the comments section some styles that really appeal to me.

Another thing to note is my cost-consciousness, for two reasons:

1) I've been renovating the inside of our house myself, and while it's coming out beautifully, it's taken up nearly every budget dollar I have. I will look to you guys for advice on something feasible, and I won't set a cost limit (to do so would be ignorant on my part, as I'm not sure what is appropriate), but I'll just need to avoid the high-end prices of professional landscaping and overly exotic, rarer plant choices;

2) I'm afraid of killing my plants. I'm hoping to find some hardy options that are murder-resistant (although I will try my very best to research and do what I'm supposed to to care for them) and until I've established my skill at gardening, I should probably avoid expensive plants that may immediately meet their death by my hand.

Any help would be greatly appreciate. I truly value your expertise, and while I have spoken to my local garden center, I'm just not confident in the expertise of the woman with whom I spoke (she was not aware that hostas may not do well in full-sun, and she suggested an indoor palm for outdoors, which did not do well at all for the three weeks it lived).

Sorry for the long explanation -- just wanted to give as much information as possible to help guide the suggestions. Let me know if you have any questions. Other than that, I'm very open to any suggestions!

Photos of the beds in my front yard below: