The landscape you have is pretty formal and traditional and works fine with the house. I see no need to rip it all out if it is in the current state shown.

Without knowing what he is planning there is no way to know if it makes sense for the architecture of your house or to have an opinion about it.

Because it looks like your house is lower than the road, an effective buffer is going to require larger shrubs and small trees. I can say that.

Thanks Chris. Appreciate the time you took to comment. The reason for the change is that the evergreens are diseased, and all of the bushes are massively overgrown due to lack of upkeep by previous owners.

Regarding design, I wish i had a good plan to show from the landscaper. He's very good, but kinda all over the place and didn't provide a detailed plan that would be easy to share with this forum. I guess i was just looking to see if there was a "correct" style of landscaping for this style of home. My nursery guy is going for more distinct shapes, and has thrown the "modern colonial" term around. When i look at my house, i don't think modern colonial, but i'm no expert. I think of this house as a southern cap cod and think of butterfly bushes and more whimsical gardens. I'm less concerned with how it looks from the road, and more concerned about the feel you get as you walk to the front door down the long sidewalk.

Well it is your house and your garden so how you want it to look and feel is what matters most. You need to convey that to the designer. I don't know what 'modern colonial' is. My guess is going to be boxwood lined beds with some formal evergreens and flowering shrubs in the boxed beds. I see hedge trimming in your future. I hope there are not any roses.

As for a correct style, your house at least calls for some symmetry in the plantings and some evergreens for winter. There is a lot of wiggle room in that.

Beautiful home.

First, know what, if any, utilities are buried in your front and side yard and where they are. Contact the companies that serve your home and get them to stick some of those little colored flags in the ground along the path of the utilities.

Second, make sure your yard is sloped/shaped so that rainwater is turned away from your home. Too much "wet" that couldn't get away may be a part of the reason the shrubs are sick.

Do some research and find out if not have the water turned away properly has any bearing on the sick plants. You don't want a repeat of a preventable problem.

If there are no underground utilities in the way directly in front of the house, then consider creating as much nearly level and, importantly, sloped away from your home front yard as possible -- you want to turn the rain water away from your home on all sides of it.

My recommendation:

Just inside the right of way, you might consider adding a row of holly bushes or some other shrub that keeps its leaves year round and looks good year round. If you could create a retaining wall just above or below them to help reshape your yard as might be needed or preferable, all the better.

Otherwise ...

Remove anything and everything that is diseased or that you just don't want for any reason and focus on a creating a healthy, disease free lawn all around your home for at least a year ... lest you end up getting rid of the sick plants but not the sickness and have it infect your remaining plants and/or new plants.

If you have plants that are not damaged or diseased but you want them elsewhere so you can do your landscaping beginning with a blank slate, consider moving those plants to beside your property line on the back or side of the house.

You could invest in some (portable) planters and/or pots rather than putting plants in the ground right away, letting you enjoy some plants now but keeping your landscaping options open for later.