I can't offer any recommendations since I have no experience of your climate but I just wanted to comment on your description of the boxwoods as being at 'the end of their lives'. Unless they were planted at least a hundred years ago, this is unlikely. Box can live a couple of hundred years where it's happy and if it's straggly it either has insufficient light, insufficient nutrition or has not been rejuvenated through pruning. Just wanted to reassure people who might be reading that box can last donkeys years.

Are you looking for something that will grow well in both the sun and shade?

That’s what I was going to say too. Why not just rejuvenate what you have. It looks good and healthy and provides green year round (and cover for small birds). Just add in some other small shrubs and perennials for colour and bee appeal.

"Pollen production in winter" will be tricky.....not all that many plants will bloom reliably in winter and be suitable for your zone. I would consider one of the winter flowering Mahonias (bealei is invasive in your area but check X media), witch hazel, wintersweet, Daphne odora or bholua or one of the late fall/early winter blooming sasanqua camellias. And hellebores are always a good choice.

floral and Kaillean, for some reason, these bushes were planted alternately, and to me, it looks like they didn't have enough boxwoods to go across but had some of these things that they thought would fill in the space OK. I'd really like the shrubs to be the same all the way across and to be mostly the same height.

Hellebores might be the right thing for the bed in front of the shrubs, thank you gardengal! The plants there now are a wildflower mix my son put in this spring.

You could move the box woods together and make them a hedge. They’re valuable. I think the others are rhodos. They can be an informal hedge and can be moved relatively easy as they have shallow roots.

I understand the urge for a clean slate. But the price to replace mature plantings with anything of a reasonable size can sometimes make you take a second look at what you have. A box shrub the size of yours is an easy $60-70 where I live.

Mahonia, camellia, witch hazel, Lenten rose, flowering quince, winter jasmine will extend your season.

Maybe check out some hollies & cherry laurels. The bees went crazy for our new schip laurels this year, which were also surprisingly fragrant. I can’t recall precisely when they flowered, but feel like it was a bit earlier than some of the typical spring stuff even after our crazy winter & later than normal last frost. Those would get too tall for all the way across, so you could also try the shorter otto luyken laurels. Love that you’re helping some bees out & don’t Roundup everything in sight.

The rhododendrons have to come out. I've seen reports that it's toxic to bees and many beekeepers close in their hives during flowering season. The resultant honey can also be bad for humans. http://www.countryfile.com/countryside/top-ten-plants-are-bad-bees

I really thank all of you for answering my questions so thoughtfully. I'm black thumb type so I need all the help I can get.

The issue with rhodos and bees is a little more complex. They are not toxic to bumblebees. This article explains the science a little better.

https://www.kew.org/blogs/kew-science/hidden-poisons-rhododendron-nectar

Kaillean, thanks for the history lesson. DS keeps honey bees; he says that bumble bees don't hive in the same manner. That's an interesting story about King Mithridates stopping the invading hordes with honeycombs made by bees that had fed on rhodos, making them fall into a stupor and allowing themselves to be slaughtered. I'm sure that story grew in the immediate retelling of it.

Susceptibility varies with particular kind but with box blight working its way through North America box is no longer a landscape stalwart.

In my area Japanese holly buzzes with bees at flowering time. In general appearance and landscape use it resembles box.

Seems like honey bees aren't out during the coldest time of the year anyway.

That looks great Yardvaark! And thank you, Embothrium, I'll keep that in mind. I love holly too, because it's green all year round.

Since the house facade is geometrically symmetric the only style of planting that is going to appear coordinated with the house is a formal one. One that repeats the pattern of the house on the ground in front of it, for an adequate distance out from the house for this relationship to be discernible.

This uniform symmetry of the house is also why the sloping topography is problematic.

you should be seeking a level top for the planting that is, more or less, below the window bottom height. Since there's a grade change, you need somewhat taller plants at the left and somewhat shorter plants at the right half

Short of installing a big deck or terrace in front, to create a level space I don't know how this can be resolved. A foundation style planting that has a level top and a slanted bottom just serves to emphasize - rather than ameliorate - the visual oddness of a shoe-box-shaped house being perched on the top of a hill. Probably on the left side in the view shown here what is instead needed is plants that grow above window height.

Such as the tree at the corner in the above drawing coming across so that it is seen more in front of the house. And not, of course limbed up radically so that it looks like it was heavily stripped by deer. And would do comparatively little to soften the house facade, as with nothing but sticks below roof height it could be seen right through.

Not a shrub, but we planted coneflowers in our front and the bees and butterflies absolutely love them! They’re beautiful and showy in the summer, though they do die back in winter. They also love to visit our our lavender, butterfly bushes, coral bells and catmint. We mixed all these with a few shrubs and grasses, so when they die back in the winter there’s still interesting landscape.

I’ve heard great things about the early season blooms of Lenten roses, but I don’t know if bees like them. Little snowdrops and crocus bloom early too. I’m not a big fan of forsythia, but it blooms profusely and very early. Korean Spice vibernum blooms somewhat early and is absolutely heavenly.

I took the photo with my phone and the slope is a little exaggerated in the picture. I'll try to get a picture that's more straight on. We have a large bank of azaleas in front of the house, nearer the street, so unless I stand in the middle of them, I'm too close up to get a picture that has the whole house in it. The real sloping happens in front of the azaleas.

some ideas using camellia, ajuga, dwarf abelia, hosta, dwarf clethra, pieris & itea. All are great for bees.

I've got a neighbor who's got extra hellebore and we might put that in the bee yard. We're thinking about keeping the boxwoods but replacing the rhododendrons and putting forsythia next to our deck, right near the chimney.

Doug, I love the way the itea looks! I've got some ajuga out front, it's the stuff on the left in front of the liriope that's creeping out onto the sidewalk and I've always liked that as a ground cover. The clethra looks like it's in the itea family, is that right?

Similar, but blooms later.

One thing to keep in mind is providing flowers for the bees all season. If the planting across the house front is mainly a single species, then there will a limited bloom period and you will need to provide other flowering plants for the remainder of the season that the bees are active, either as nonshrubs or in other areas of your property. Also, remember that what we find appealing in flowers isn’t necessarily what the bees find appealing. One of my most visited plants is a holly which is abuzz with pollinators when in bloom, even though the individual flowers are minute and from a few feet away the flowers are almost invisible. Another popular and longblooming plant I see honey bees visiting is the white clover in my lawn, so you can overseed the lawn with clover. If I were you, I might start planning by getting a long list of plants on a beekeepers’ site or books on he subject and then start evaluating those plants for ornamental value rather than starting with the landscape value and then trying to figure out whether the plants will be attractive to bees.

"The clethra looks like it's in the itea family, is that right?"

Not the same family and not even closely related :-) They may appear similar superficially but are really very distinct in form and habit.

NHBabs, we've got holly that spans about 20 feet across the back of the house. I appreciate all of your input, I'll take some more pictures and post them.

Son has made some decisions. He likes the Midnight Magic Crape Myrtle and is thinking about using them for the left side of the house, in the sunshine. Any thoughts?

He also wants to plant some purple asters on the left side of the house, facing the driveway. I think you could classify it as part sun, because even though it gets no direct sunlight, it isn't what I consider in the shade, with shadows from the house. The sun passes over the left end of the house, tracking down the driveway toward the backyard. It's about a 25 foot long bed, only about 2' deep and has three boxwoods set about 8 feet apart (you know, it's kinda like the first homeowner liked boxwoods but could only afford half of what he needed). There are two short, newish azaleas there but they're not growing well in that location and we're going to transplant them to the right side of the house, in the shade.

This summer, he planted a wildflower mix in the bed in front of the shrubs. It was not in my plan, but it is an accomplished fact. We are going to dig them up at the end of the season,
but I worry that it will be hard to get rid of all of the traces of them. Will they insistently grow back?

Your advice has been very valuable, I hope you'll give me some input on this. Thanks.

Hollies are IMMENSELY popular with bees as is clethra alnifolia and bottlebrush buckeye (I’m a beekeeper and gardener). Witch hazel is a winter bloomer and the next tree I plan to plant! Fun topic!

We've got mature hollies all the way along the back of our house, so we're fortunate there. I'm in Greensboro and I'm having a hard time finding clethra, but I'd plant it if I could. I think he also wants to plant thyme, but that's next spring I guess.