I would keep but trim such that canopy has a horizontal bottom and more clearance from shrubs below. And let the top grow ... to a goal of being over the building, not in front. A future goal for the canopy bottom would be not lower than the building eaves.

I don't get why abutting shrubs are trimmed as if they're individuals.

The walk seems pinched tight ... like something you have find, instead of just knowing where it is.

Thank you! It had not occurred to me about the walkway feeling pinched. I can easily open that up.

A good point about the holly tree. You don’t think it’s just too close to the house?

Those shrubs are that way because there is an electrical outlet back there between them and we have to have access to that. That’s one reason I’m thinking of taking them out and opening it all up. But, I don’t know what to replace them with.

"You don’t think it’s just too close to the house?" Of course I think it's too close to the house! But that seems to be typical everywhere. So we make do. Keep it trimmed off the building and life will go on. If you were planting anew, most people on this forum would tell you to plant farther away. But I doubt you want to hear that you should rip out every plant that is closer than 3' from your house and start over!

One other thing I forgot to mention. I love Liriope, but not as an edging. It looks much better as a solid groundcover in an area. But as long as you have the bed it's edging filled with other plants, I won't complain. That's vastly superior to the empty, mulched bed edged with Liriope.

Point taken! I guess my ultimate question was exactly that - do I just make do with what I have inherited, or do I start over?

What looks like a mulched bed in the front is just a flower garden waiting to grow. But I feel the same way about liriope as edging. I have many areas in my backyard which I love because the liriope fills the whole area.

Thank you!

I love trees but I think you should cut down that holly tree. It is too close to the house and it will be forever
until it doesn’t block that whole corner of your house. The sooner you cut it down and plant something you love, the sooner your front yard will look the way you want.

Thank you for the encouragement! That is my gut feeling.

There you go. Both sides of the coin. Pick whatever answer you wanted to hear most. :-)

Oddly, when people remove a plant because it is planted too close to the building, they almost invariable plant the replacement too close, too. Go figure!

Do not chop it down is my vote. It's roots are not damaging your foundation and it looks very nice IMHO. If your gut is to chop it and you just wanted someone else to agree with you, then there is that too here :)

My gut feeling was to chop it but the reason I posted is because I have lost perspective and wanted someone objective to look with fresh eyes. Because it is has a graceful trunk structure, and is a home for birds, and it has beautiful berries in the winter, I have not chopped it for all these years.

If everyone who commented had said “definitely cut it down”, then I would know my gut feeling was correct. But since not everyone saw it that way, now I know that my gut feeling is not necessarily the right one.

i think I will try trimming the canopy as the first comment said and see what it looks like. I may take out some of those boxwoods that I don’t really like and open up that space somewhat. I feel like the house can’t breathe over there!

And part of it is just being stuck at home and overthinking it. First-world problems, with coronavirus all around!

I am teaching virtually from home now, and while it is nice to have time to really think about landscaping for the first time in a while, I don’t want to go overboard with it either.

What I would do is to remove the ivy from the trunks and the mulberry seedlings from the bed. I'd leave the holly provided you can keep up the maintenance.

I vote to keep it - and thank you Yardvark for the advice re training it. I love cottage gardens that include a few formal elements. The pruned holly is just that.

Ditto on keeping the holly. As you said, the birds love it too.

Alternatively, if a person were up to the task, the tree could be moved, probably with a setback of some temporary period. At any rate, conceptually, I'd go more for a scheme like this. The red lines represent if the tree were moved and the bed reshaped to accommodate it.

Wow!! Thank you SO much. You have really helped this extremely visual person have a better vision of what to do in this space. I had thought of reshaping the bed but seeing your drawing makes me positive that that is what I want to try.

I’m not sure about moving the tree - that might be beyond my abilities right now. But reshaping the bed would give me space for some cottagey (I know that isn’t a word) perennials at the foreground, without completely removing everything.

Can't thank you enough.

I had so much fun today with step one of creating a new garden bed. I limbed up the holly as Yardvaark suggested and it made all the difference! I am so happy I did not follow my initial gut feeling and cut this tree down. It adds structure and the trunk is so pretty. Had I cut it down, I would have been so heartsick!! It felt awesome to get rid of all those old boxwoods and some other overgrown shrubs in there as well. I feel like my house can breathe again. Why didn’t I cut them out long ago? This weekend I am digging out all the stumps.

I will be reshaping this whole bed (I think along the line of the green hose laid across?) and edging with brick. I am excited to put in the things I love. I might plant some smaller azaleas in front of the window (far away from the house!)

Around the fountain I will be putting in hostas - I have a hosta garden in the backyard too and I love it.

thank you all for helping me and giving me such excellent advice! Any other suggestions are welcome!

While it may seem seem fine, or wonderful, to be at your house, looking outward, surrounded by garden, I don't think entering your house looks like an inviting experience for the outside visitor. It would look more welcoming if the the path were spacious and visible. Much of this could be done by reconfiguring the bed arrangement. There are plenty more places to plant things at other parts of the yard.

I'm not picking over what is in the bed, but nearer the house, the foundation planting in front of the white-framed windows ... the two shrubs seem too large and blocky. I'd replace them with a single shrub in a friendlier mound shape. Being close together, the windows need but a single shrub to occupy their toe space. The window boxes could stand to hold a greater volume of soil and be mounted a little lower and growing a larger plant.

The lowest limbs of the large tree need to be removed. Since they're already overshadowed by those above, they'll be hanging lower, and more in the "face" of the scene, every year. When they're gone, suddenly the main trunk itself will look more important. If more screening is desired between your yard and the neighbor, something like oak leaf hydrangea near the lot line might work well as a backdrop.

Yes, I can see exactly what you mean. In addition, the little bed that is in front and blocking the view of the path from the street has not done well the last few years. The house faces due south and that area gets a lot of direct sun all day. I have found it is hard to keep anything in that “hot spot” that does really well.

I am going to implement your ideas. I was already going to have that large tree limbed up this weekend anyway, but I love the idea of an oak leaf hydrangea. I planted 5 of them in my backyard and they are absolutely beautiful when in bloom.

Do you have a particular evergreen shrub that you like for under that double window? It is shaded by the house a little so isn’t quite as hot there, but it definitely is in direct sun much of the day. Anything that is not a holly or a boxwood?

Again, I cant thank you enough for your help.

"... Anything that is not a holly or a boxwood?" It looks like the size that a dwarf yaupon holly could easily be held to, but I can understand that you might want a different texture. Of course, there is Azalea. Dwarf Abelia. Maybe someone else has a suggestion for evergreen that does not get too large. If you consider non-evergreen, possibly one of the not-so-big Spiraeas.

Good luck on all you do! Come back later with "after" pics that compare with your "before" ones.

I have a spirea already there. Maybe I can take the two boxwoods out and just leave the spirea? Or plant one more spirea on each side? I love it, and maybe I don’t need evergreen there after all.

Since you already have the spiraea, you might try that solution. One looks like plenty to me. If it has room to grow, it should fill the spot without causing too much trimming later on. A shrub's shape is important, so train the spirea to be a mound, not a ball, centered in front of the window unit.

Ok. worth a shot!

It’s coming right along! It looks so much better since I took your advice of opening up the front pathway. I wanted to extend the front garden bed anyway, so I just built a path through to achieve a similar look.

I am exhausted! From removing sod to tilling to adding soil to planting to making borders and paths out of found brick and stone, I have done this whole project myself, except for relocating two huge boxwoods and pulling out about 10 stumps, which my husband did with his truck and a chain.

But it is so rewarding to have done this after so many years of putting it off.

Still have to limb up the tree. And seedlings have sprouted in the center bed - I always have some cosmos and zinnias in there along with all the summer perennials.

It looks promising. What a lot of work! Glad to help inspire you. It will be a charming place again when all your plants are up and blooming.

It is greatly improved.

wow really good work! and hats off to all the committed advisors you have on this thread. good community work!

After looking at the 3rd picture down, directly above, was going to harp on the tree needing to be limbed up and the bed below it expanded, but see I already covered it earlier. One thing I don't think I mentioned, and a lot of us gardeners tend to ignore it, is how much better the overall picture becomes when the grass is in good shape. I know we're coming out of winter, but if it needs attention, soon is coming the time to give it. It can make a huge difference. What grows on the porch trellises? Some heavenly blue morning glories would look awesome there.

Yes I agree about the grass - it is actually really beautiful when it takes off and I have a lawn company now to help me with it. Limbing up the tree will help it significantly as some bare spots have appeared. I have clematis on the trellisis about the bloom. I love morning glories though!

Here are pictures from this morning. I am wondering if I should move the lambs ears more to the center and put my newly divided Stella lilies in front instead? I know lambs ears aren’t for everyone, but I love them and have had success keeping them contained and neat. But I’ve never done a whole border with them.

Other plants in there are catmint, dwarf bee balm, homestead verbena, Heuchera, and there is also rudbeckia and agastache in the bed behind which will spread forward I’m sure.

I know I need something to unify the whole thing which isn’t liriope and which can handle direct hot sun one one side and part sun on the other side.

I planted 2 autumn carnation azaleas to replace the boxwoods, and you can’t tell from pictures but they are well away from the house!

Of Stellas and lamb's ears, use the shorter plant near the bed edge. I have no problem with Liriope itself, but don't care for it -- or almost any plant really -- as a string shaped "edging." I'd rather see a block planted solid and let it form its own edge, being careful of course, that the edge is well shaped and maintained. It's easier, cleaner and makes a stronger, easy-to-read statement.

A very good point. I tried to lay it out so it wasn’t exactly along the edge, but woven throughout a little more. Even so, it probably still reads as an edging. and for a cottage garden appearance which is what I love the most, it may be too formal.

It’s days like this I wish my master gardener mother were still here to guide me. Especially since this used to be her garden, 25 years ago. It was an amazing riot of color at that time! It is where I feel closest to her, which is why this has been a true labor of love.

I’m going to go back and look at some of my many gardening books for some further inspiration on this.

The summer garden has turned out so well. I just want to thank everyone for their inspiration and assistance! Still so happy I kept the holly tree. Can’t wait for the rest of the rudbeckia to bloom - they are late this year!

The Invincible hostas have done really well in this location! The muhly grass behind them hasn’t thrived as well as I had hoped - not enough sun. So I will likely move them to a sunnier spot. It is a work in progress, like any garden!

this is off topic a bit, but the photo with the rose's before they died was my favorite. your yard looked so friendly and welcoming. the ivy the colors, the window boxes, the previous individual house numbers, all of it. I know seasons change but all of that color was so wonderful and it all looked so lush.

Mseamm - yes. That was one of my very favorite seasons in my garden. Most everything had been newly planted - it was 10 years ago. So nothing at that time was overgrown. And we had to change the numbers on the house for solar ones that could be seen at night as per city recommendation. (But, we did move the original numbers and put them by the side door, so they are still on the house).

I especially loved the jasmine growing up around the flagpole. The jasmine suddenly died last summer. I have planted more, and hopefully it will catch on. I will say that in person, the garden now does still look really lush. The photos don’t do it justice.

Looking good!

A good thing about the holly tree is that its look, as a tree, will improve with age as its top becomes larger and is gradually more refined into a dome shape, and as the trunks thicken and develop their character.

The left side seems so much more attractive with just the Hostas and no shrubs hiding the house. I have shrubs but your house is better looking than mine.

Yes, I can’t believe I let those shrubs stay for so many years. Although it was a huge job involving a truck and a long rope and strong men to finally pull them out of there, I transplanted two very large boxwoods with great difficulty and they are doing really well in another location.

The black-eyed Susans were late this year, but they are blooming their heads off now!