Metal garden art would look excellent rust and coloured ......I live in Australia and have done work on a house very similar to yours

can u post photos more detail wider angle

Yes -rip, rip, rip. Start by removing the green cubes ( shrubs ) from the front . Is that brick and if so what color is it ? Hard to tell. Need to see the house centered in the photo so go further out and make another shot . Your house could be a stunning contemporary statement - it has nice clean lines. What do you want in a landscape ? Low maintenance, no lawn, etc. Where are you located int he Midwest ?

I will upload more photos. We are in a nw suburb of Chicago. I know we have a lot of work to do. It is brick with siding under the windows for some reason. We were trying to blend brick and paint, but maybe we should make it contrast more. We have a huge front yard with a pond so no grass is not an option and wouldn't want that anyway.

Few more

Wow you certainly have a lot of frontage. is the pond in your frontyard as well ? I lived in Chicago for 45 years but worked mainly in the city. As to the siding beneath the windows I wonder if you could call a brick mason and ask them if removing that and adding brick matching the existing could be applied. I'd then paint all the white trim to a taupe , sage or chocolate brown . I see two skinny square columns which I would beef up. Do you use your front yard for anything except coming and going or do you just want curb appeal ? If you just want curb appeal you could create flower beds in front and make a path from the entrance to the most travelled destination. I would keep the plantings contemporary in keeping with the architecture of your home -ornamental grasses, perennials, low evergreens and blooming shrubs.

Our property ends at that tree by the pond. Since we have such large overhangs we would also like to extend the front porch. Not sure if we should keep it cement or some sort of stone or even an engineered wood?

I think that's a great idea dtritsch. I did notice the large overhangs. Perhaps something contemporary like this but in a chocolate brown color : Here's another view of it :

Its difficult to get a complete picture of your property and I'm just making an assumption that it's similar to the one in my doodle below. Since you've indicated you'd like to keep a large lawn, flower beds near the house filled with low growing evergreens, blooming shrubs, ornamental grasses and perennials and mulched with pebbles or shredded pine bark would look nice. Ornamental blooming trees of various sizes would give an added dimension. A path of stepping stones to a popular destination - the pond or curb for instance.

I somehow couldn't find this post and just got a new phone and it popped up. Thank you for your drawings. Still haven't done anything. Three kids on five sports teams. Not a lot t of time. We are going to do the kitchen this summer.