Lower limbs & foliage should not be blocking the view of the first floor of house.

The fact that your windows are quite low to the ground has me thinking that none of the existing plantings are savable. Everything has something wrong with it. I would start from scratch. The cycads are too close to the walk so should be moved to a location where they are useful.

The walk is probably just wide enough to be useful. But it is too narrow looking for its length and for the house size. Since it is straight the solution that screams out to make it right is by widening it with brick strips at each side. The goal width would be to match the porch opening. It looks like you could add a double row of brick (2 x 8" width) at each side for a 32" wider walk. The walk will set a tone that gives the impression of value of the whole house. Wider will make it look expensive and narrow will make the house look cheap.

If you want visual feedback based on your pictures, they are taken from too far away to deal with the foundation planting. Your first picture looks like it was taken from the curb. It should be about 1/2 that distance from the house. If you'd move the camera closer and then take a series of slightly overlapping pictures that pan from left to right lot lines, I think we could see your house much better. Don't try to substitute a computer generated panorama as it is too small and distorted. Make sure the camera remains at the same position (at the sidewalk) for all pictures. It merely pivots.

House needs a tree of some size to the right in the first and third views so it is framed by that. Instead of open sky, a telephone pole and a neighbor's house being the accompaniment.

Thank you. Both of your advice are valuable and I will get started! I will take better photos today! Thanks again a lot!

Diamond Deuces, the current landscaping is so poor I hardly know how to describe it. I am usually encouraging people to try to keep their mature plants because they are an asset. In the case of your garden I am not sure any of it can stay in place.

The Sago palms could be transplanted to a place where they can develop naturally. If they stay as they are they will always be trimmed which is a waste.

It looks like you have a tree planted rather close to the house on the right side. I think it would be best to move that tree.

The bed is the most puzzling of all. Instead of all the plants working together they each stand alone like tiny green monoliths.

There is a lack of lower plants and ground cover types.

I notice that all the shrubs have been sheared. If you employ the "mow and blow" sort of maintenance gardener they only know how to shear so you should pick plants that take well to shearing. I prefer natural shapes and selective pruning for size.

Attractive features of your house are the low windows and entrance. I would like them to stand out more.

I suggest you spend some time looking at pictures to see what you like.

I trust you will be given more ideas after you post more photographs.

I love your house. It looks like a little church. A little church pretty much calls for overly pruned evergreen shrubs out front so I was looking for a way to save the low jellybean shaped ones to help form a courtyard entry. Your new pictures show everything is too big of a plant by habit and planted far to close to the house. It all has to go. Shrubs should be planted a minimum of three feet from the house walls.

I still like the idea of a courtyard entry with a low evergreen hedge forming the boundary. Do as Yardvaark said, widen the front walk, but just inside the courtyard. Make a path and entry to the driveway side as well. I can see some properly placed Hollywood Junipers, Juniperus 'Torulosa' as a strong vertical element inside the courtyard and on the blank side walls of the house too.

The sago palms, crepe myrtle and possibly the ligustrum may be worth reusing. Ligustrum is a shrub well suited for training into the small tree form Yardvaark is always promoting.

If the tree out on the front lawn is what I think it is, a Bradford pear, it needs to disappear with the rest of the foundation plantings.

In general, think of making a courtyard entry effect with a low evergreen hedge.

Enlarged front walk makes house look smaller which is not an enhancement. Maybe widen the landing but not the entire walk, so that there is not this grandiose walk ending in a mismatched small looking house. That already looks a bit small in relation to the lot size to begin with.

"... the small tree form Yardvaark is always promoting."

Haha! It looks that way, doesn't it?? Really, what I am promoting is the idea that the closer a tree is to a house, the smaller it must be. And usually, we're dealing with foundation plantings. For those trees right in the foundation planting, sometimes that height might be 12' or thereabouts. (Here, it looks like I'm suggesting something that gets to twenty-something feet.) It depends on the house. Many of the plants that will make small trees come from what we'd call large shrubs. Usually, they are multi-trunk, which is fine with me as I think, standing side-by-side, they offer more overall interest. That's the backstory behind my seemingly incessant obsession.

"Enlarged front walk makes house look smaller which is not an enhancement."

This seems to just be a personal assessment. Yardvaark's rendering showing a widened walkway does not seem at all out of proportion to the house! And even small houses need or should have generous front walkways that will accommodate a couple walking side by side.......that means at least 4.5-5' in width. A narrower walkway is uninviting and awkward and diminishes the impact of any entry, regardless of size.

Thank you all. I actually already had planned to widen the walk way and it's just incredible that without actually seeing the home in person that Yardvaark knew 'to the inch' how much wider it should be which matched my landing exactly.

I definitely will overhaul everything, including the palms.

Many pointed out trimming of the "big tree" out front. Should I just get the whole thing removed or just cut to allow an 8ft clearance? I do enjoy the window privacy for the upstairs window. I uploaded what I called a "base" photo that I created when I first bought the home because I knew that I'd have to do something with the front. Maybe that could better shape the advice on keeping or ridding the front tree? Either way, you guys are amazing and I'm most appreciative.

"Should I just get the whole thing removed or just cut to allow an 8ft clearance?"

Since it's likely to be a 'Bradford' or similar pear, as mentioned, there are some big drawbacks to it. On the other hand, it's already there. You could milk a little more use out of it by trimming it up. It needs that at a minimum. But then, figure on how to make the landscape work when it must be removed, which you can do any time you want to make the change, or when the tree splits in half and forces you to make it.

BTW, removing lower limbs is not a difficult task in most cases. You can remove many while standing on a stepladder and using a folding hand pruning saw. (A 10" blade such as what Corona offers works best, cutting through most limbs like butter.) If you need to go higher, a cheap pole saw will work for most homeowners. Of all the landscape maintenance tasks, limbing up a tree is one of the most rewarding as the difference can be huge relative to the work required. Also BTW, when a tree is let go too far and lower limb removal is "catch up," the remaining canopy might have a somewhat abnormal shape. In time this disappears as remaining limbs grow. It's best to stay ahead of the curve.

What? A pruning saw on fat tree limbs? That's crazy. Sawzall!!!

Agreed. In Texas? The maple (?) in the flower bed will get too big, the crepe myrtles are way too close to the house - may be able to relocate. I love the purple fringe flower shrub colors but the overall shrub layout is odd.

Most of those lower limbs are 4" or less. A 10" pruning saw is very quick.