I really like that! Thank you!!!

I would pull the landing and walk out far enough away from the porch such that no planting beds are less than 6' depth. Deeper is OK. You should work all this out in a plan ("map") before you install anything ... so that you know everything fits and will be in the right place.

"If budgeting, we plan on doing a 3 foot width sidewalk in stamped pavement."

I would encourage you to enlarge that width. 3' is too narrow - that is a single file pathway :-) A wider path - at least 48" - will allow a couple to walk side by side and provide a more gracious and welcoming entry approach.

As Gardengal says -- 3' is too narrow. 4' is minimum acceptable. 5 or 6' is great depending on details. I'd make the landing for the porch extra spacious.

Oh dear, my heart aches looking at the bald photos. Frankly, with a little bit of planning you could have salvaged half of your garden treasures if not more :-(

My heart did not ache for even a billionth of a second.

Maybe you don't have a heart for plants.

They were dead, if you were to look at them closely. :( Plus, the previous owner did the yard 20 years ago. Looked like a jungle. We are going to to simple.

Yeah, they are dead now :-(

Lol, for sure.

A "heart for plants" ...? I guess not. No idea what explains a lifetime of working with them.

I would change the accent colors and add some natural wood. White around the secondary door to bring the attention to the front door instead. Thank you Yardvaark(9A) - I borrowed your excellent landscaping.

The bow window is much more appealing with the shutters removed.

Thank you so much for the comments.

Great idea about removing the bay window shutters. I'm thinking of doing that. what do you all think about having a flower box on the left windows?

We still need to put mulch down (dark brown, not red). We put down sod and planted today.

We are doing a 4 foot walk way and re doing both steps completely... Hopefully done in the next few weeks.

Boring and trite. Sorry but straight lines just don't work. There's no flow or natural look.

it's not straight.

Well other than the wider part at the left side (I assume to accommodate the tree), it looks straight in the photos.

I'm not a landscape pro, but won't the cypress flanking the stairs be too large in a couple of years? Example below:

It look nice so far, I would paint the secondary stairs white and paint the front door a different color than the shutters and garage door. Too much red. Wider path as well.

The garden needs curves.

It does have curves. Everything is a baby. It all needs a few years to mature and grow out.

I notice somebody else has said the same thing before.

But it appears that nobody said the following (I took the time to skim the entire thread) The curves won't appear in the garden as the plants mature, the plants will stay in the essentially straight line garden beds.

A good way to get curves in the garden is to use the walkways that are necessary in any case. Curve the first walkway from the driveway to your main door. Then curve the second (narrower and shorter) walkway from the first walkway to your second door. Vary the width of the walkways slightly as they curve.

You can add more curves by adding (enlarged roundish-shaped) landing places at the bottom of the steps. Grow perennials or whatever you like along the walkways and landing places.

If you shy away from the cost of putting hardscapes in the ground right away, use mulch first which has the advantage that you can easily vary the shape and width of the walkways and shape and size of the landing places until they are just right.

There are infinite variations, for inspiration look at images on the Internet.

Good luck!

Maybe I didn't specify that the beds look pretty much straight along the edge of the lawn even if the plants are staggered, etc. . Others here seem to agree that some curves (i.e. curve the front of the beds to add interest and to accommodate future size of plants) would be nice.

Before you put in your front walk I would cut back the sod, remove the small apron at the foot of the stairs and make the walk as wide as the steps. It would make a big difference and since you still have bare dirt it would be hardly any extra work or expense. Exactly as phuninthesun shows in their rendering.

The idea that curves are somehow automatically better than straight lines is mistaken. They are both good but either must make sense where it is used. If front and back edges of a relatively shallow bed are straight, it does not make sense to impose curves within the bed. If a walk is relatively short and there are no obstructions near it's path, imposing a curve seems to be without reason. If a walk is connecting two planes that are offset from one another, an S-curve might be the perfect solution. Curves without purpose seem odd.

I'm not convinced a path from street directly to porch is needed here. If the owners think so, they would know. If it wasn't needed, it would be better to put the effort into a more improved path (wider, spacious landing and upgraded materials) coming from the driveway, which is an already existing major path.

Not automatic, but in this case, 2 straight lines from the street to the square-shaped house (i.e. driveway and walkway to main door) look pretty 'square' to contribute much to curb appeal, if at all.

Moreover, there is a practical issue that has already been pointed out further above by another poster: visitors that arrive by car will have to walk on the lawn from driveway to main door (or make a detour to the street and back via walkway to main door).

True, OP stated that the main door is defective and hence not used, and only the second door is used. Nonetheless, it is not a good idea to base the landscape design on a defective main door. Better is to repair the main door and base the landscape design on a functional main door (this has already been pointed out by the same previous poster)

Hence, curved walkways from driveway to the 2 doors are quite purposeful and soften the 'square' look to enhance curb appeal. In contrast, a straight walkway from street to main door is not purposeful and enhances the 'square' look detrimental to curb appeal.

We're going to have to disagree that a straight walkway in a small, rectangular yard is without purpose or potential curb appeal. I think it's going to fit just fine if they decide it's needed, and that its beauty will probably depend a lot on its width (too skinny and it will look cheap and wrong) and on its materials and design details.

We will be doing this in Brittany blend, and same stairs as you see in the picture for both side.

We plan re doing the red you see to another color... we just might buy new doors...

Hm, the pic in the promo shows a rounded landing, a curved walkway, presumably to the driveway, and also a curved gardenbed.

And it is not me who put up the pic :-)

Edit: I don't claim any credits, it's just good old landscaping.

Yup, hubby doesn't want that.

Hubby doesn't want to pay? That's what I meant with "If you shy away from the cost of putting hardscapes in the ground right away, use mulch first which has the advantage that you can easily vary the shape and width of the walkways and shape and size of the landing places until they are just right."

Wood chip mulch could be had for much, much less than the cost of replacing the two doors that you had in mind. Or if you are lucky enough to live in a happy place, some happy municipalities give away mulch for free.

Don't want to get in the middle of domestic peace, though.

@Yardvaark I disagree indeed on the walkway from the street to the main door, it is simply bad landscape design. The next FedEx guy may again kick the main door because he has to walk on the lawn from the driveway.

Much better is a walkway from the driveway to the main door.

Moving forward, I would recommend paying very close attention to the label information on plants you’re buying. You have made improvements from your initial post, but some of your new plants are not planted in the best place for them. The hydrangeas, for example, will grow quite large and are planted far too close to each other and the hostas. The same is true for your stair evergreen — it will overtake the hostas. On another note, you are going to have very little winter interest. The hostas and hydrangeas will be dormant, leaving you with very little winter color.

I say all of this with the best intentions. Plants are fickle and you have to tend to their specific, individual needs to get optimal effects. If you want any help with plant selection, I’d be more than happy to help you. Will just need a little information about your USDA plant zone.

In the same vein, all the OP had to do was to install the right walkway (from the driveway to the main door) and remove the plants that were in the way. If the plant density was still too high for her liking, then thin out selectively to preserve the precious 'mature garden' look that the old garden had.

It only sensible gardening to overplant a new garden so that it does not look bald in the beginning. As the years go by and the plants grow bigger, keep the best plants and remove the less than best ones.

But it is water under the bridge. True, OP said that all plants were dead, but they all looked green and not brown. Removal of all those mature plants is a gardening set back for maybe a decade :-(

"It only sensible gardening to overplant a new garden so that it does not look bald in the beginning."

This could not be further from the truth - only a rookie would make that mistake and any professional LD will tell you so!! Plants should alway be sited/placed to accommodate their expected mature size, not for immediate gratification. Designers always advise their clients that the area undergoing a completely new planting will look bare for awhile until the plants establish and start to fill in. Filling in any bare spots is done with annuals or easily disposable plants, not expensive trees and shrubs that need to be chopped down or dug up later, often damaging their neighbors in the process. Overplanting also leads to all manner of disease and pest problems, which may have been the issue with the OP's original plants.

I would also strongly disagree with this statement: "I disagree indeed on the walkway from the street to the main door, it is simply bad landscape design." It is NOT "bad landscape design" at all!! Siting of a major entry walkway is extremely situational and depends on the usage. A walkway from the street to the entry may be very appropriate in established neighborhoods with sidewalks and predominately streetside parking. And may be completely inappropriate in areas without paved sidewalks or where there is an extended distance from the house to the road. Or if the driveway was sized and planned for visitor parking.

Tossing around phrases like 'bad landscape design' without knowing the considerations and factors involved is not at all helpful and demonstrates a lack of understanding of the LD principles involved.

^ And? It has nothing to do with landscaping or anything. Accidents happen.

80% of my neighborhood has a walkway up to their house.

Seems like some of you are still nitpicking things that are already done. We like what we are doing. If you want to fork over $, feel free.

Thanks everyone to those who tried to help. I appreciate it. I'll probably post one more time with the final look.

Yeah, it is water under the bridge, but others can learn too. This could definitely be done better for less $.

Edit: I double checked the facts and can't believe how the facts go one way and bad landscape designs and what not go the other way. Or is there something else going on besides the facts?

Here's a fact. The conifers she has chosen are alberta spruces, not cypresses. I agree that new landscapes should be as densely planted as possible, for fas well as ease of maintenance. The infill plants should be groundcover which will not have to be tossed as the shrubs and trees mature. Americans move on average every five years. This fact alone can explain why our landscaping is generally so miserable. It's eternally new, or it's overgrown because it isn't worth changing.

While I am always open to differing opinions, tossing around intentionally inflammatory comments like "bad landscape design" to suggestions from qualified and experienced professional landscape designers is more than a little presumptuous and self-aggrandizing. Exactly what kind of experience does one have to support these contentions??

"This fact alone can explain why our landscaping is generally so miserable. It's eternally new, or it's overgrown because it isn't worth changing."

Or it wasn't well thought out or planned to begin with and has not been properly maintained. A well-designed landscape plan is pretty timeless - 5 years or 25 years - as long as it is properly maintained. Nothing is a "plant and forget" situation :-)

I have read a few books supporting groundcover infill plants and dense planting designs, but those designs require careful plant selection and knowledge of the plant's lifecycle, survival strategies, root structure, growth habit and the planting's succession. This is normally in the context of a designed meadow or woodland community. When I look at the OPs post, they clearly were thinking about a more conventional planting.

Please post a picture when the path is in. Your straight path is just fine.

This thread is rigged.

Steps and Walkway complete. It rained so it's dark. Asphalt driveway is next.

Please refrain from discussing any topics above. It's exhausting and decisions are made.

Shutters will be a navy blue and doors will have a natural wood color.

Very nice. Has anyone used the front door path? UPS guy maybe? Thank you for remembering to post the completed path. You know, we would not mind seeing the navy shutters and new doors when they are done.

Suddenly, the front entrance looks more welcoming!

Thank you! :) I appreciate the interest and comments :)

First picture is before and after. I will do a real one after everything is done. The last three pictures are inspiration for the color blue. I'm thinking white railings, as well.

Would it look weird if we painted the garage door white with the doors blue?

Thank you! :) I appreciate the interest and comments :)

First picture is before and after. I will do a real one after everything is done. The last three pictures are inspiration for the color blue. I'm thinking white railings, as well.

Would it look weird if we painted the garage door white with the doors blue?

Thank you! :) I appreciate the interest and comments :)

First picture is before and after. I will do a real one after everything is done. The last three pictures are inspiration for the color blue. I'm thinking white railings, as well.

Would it look weird if we painted the garage door white with the doors blue?

Maybe you meant garage doors white and "trim" blue? Just voting: it would not appeal to me.

No, I meant white garage door (where you park in) with my two doors blue.

Thanks for the feedback!