Water oak eventually becomes a 100' tall tree with a wide canopy. Seems like it would be too big for your front yard.

Thank you for your responses! The nursery that came out helped place it. The advised the left side where there was a small bed of shrubs surrounded by rock. It is kind of hard to tell the depth of the yard from this photo; there's more room than this shows. I'll be posting an updated photo soon and will definitely be needing more input for future (and hopefully not last minute) decisions. Thanks again.

Small bed + large tree = conflict of scale, the tree ending up looking like a bull in a car trunk. And how close is the tree going to be to the house, paving, drive and other physical features that might be adversely impacted when it is 60 ft. tall, with a large, heavy root system?

The only place in the picture I can see tree can go is to right of house about near the edge of picture. Or it can go in the parkway, but we know what will happen in 25 - 30 years.

We do hope to add one more large tree out to the right side as each of you had mentioned. This is where it was placed. Is this a huge mistake?

Would also love any other thoughts on how to update all landscaping. I have never loved the two large shrubs on either side of entry, however, we do want to "soften" the exterior of our home. I feel the appearance is a bit macho (I know, the red door needs to go) and that anything symmetrical adds to that very formal, strong, imposing vibe.

The only worse place to locate it would have been directly in front of the door or in the middle of the driveway. It's current location blocks two windows and doesn't really add anything positive to your yard.

Unless the scale in your pictures is extremely deceiving, your front yard is far too small for the mature size of this tree. The mature oaks in my yard are all at least 20 feet from the house and some of them are still really too close to the house and require pruning every 3-4 years.

IMO, sorry to say, the tree location is a mistake. Even if it is farther from the house than it looks, it would bug me endlessly that it lines up with the upstairs window. It if had just been a few feet farther left, it could probably pass. I know it's a pain but I would fix it before it becomes unfixable. Keep in mind when taking advice from workers ... their primary objective is to get it off the truck and get out of there.

When you get to the point of wanting advice on the overall front, start a new thread for it and submit pictures that show the complete scene from lot line to lot line. To do that, stand on the public sidewalk in line with the front door and snap slightly overlapping pictures while pivoting the camera from far left to far right. Do not change camera location between pictures of that scene. Post individual pictures, not a panorama made of them. And tell us your objectives.

Not trying to depress you, but it is a huge tree so you want it as far away from the house as possible and not in front of windows, unless you want a huge tree hiding your house. Even if you did, it should still go farther away from your house. It also seems like those "bushes" by your doorway are actually trees, once again, planted way to close to the house to accommodate their mature size. Often times, landscapers are only too happy to plant trees too close to houses to accommodate their mature size, knowing that in a few years either someone else will buy the house and rip them out and want to buy new, or the home owner will kill the existing ones with improper pruning, or want to start over. Take a deep breath, it can all be fixed, we can help!