The best advice I can give you is take a photo on your phone of the house. Note the direction your home faces. Go to your local nursery with the photo and get their advice. Don't go to a chain nursery or a big box nursery but a local one. Their plants will be grown in local soil and less likely to fail. Most nursery's will also come and plant for you. Professional landscape lighting is the way to go. Trying to DIY that will result in problems unless you are very proficient at this sort of thing. Almost any porch needs only a large colorful pot of either an evergreen plant like rosemary or seasonal flowers, just depends on how often you want to change it out. An evergreen will be less work!

Thank you very much, I could not figure out how to show the photo's I took from my new phone!!