Your traditional 5 over 5 home can go either way but your deck and short first floor windows preclude anything like below. However, you can do formal plantings in a circular bed out in front of it. Just keep it balanced and formal with traditionally formal plantings.

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This is a much bigger garden than I've ever had to tackle.

==>>> which makes you think you want more??? ... that might be the downside to increasing bed size ..

btw.. why is the kids practicing tossing pizza dough in the front yard ... seems like more of a backyard thing.. lol ...

the walkway is your limitation ... and i think you have at least one shrub.. left of center.. that has too much potential for the limited garden bed ..

presuming you dont want to rip out the walkway ... then i would come into the lawn.. and work some things in there ... the bigger shrubs

if replacing the walkway ... thats a different conversation ...

it might be interesting to go out the the street.. and show us the whole front yard.. you have at least one big bed out there.. and it probably should be tied into whatever you do up by the house.. i dont mean connecting it all .. i mean a unified design ...

do you really need all that front lawn.. just for mowing.. this is where you could put some shrubs and smaller trees .. to reduce the effect of your house looking like its just sitting up there by itself... its going to be hard from a garden standpoint... to over cone the height of the house.. if you are working in 6 or 8 feet just in front of the house ....

the point of shrubs and smaller trees.. is that except for the year of planting and watering until establishment ... they can be rather free range .. as compared to a relatively higher maintenance flower garden ...

ken

I think your house perched proudly atop the swoop-up slope of green, unadorned lawn is pictorially perfect — except for the deck railings out front. If you are unwilling to remove them, I would move the upper story window boxes down to the railings of the porch (and get more of them) and be choosier about the hedges and plantings you are using to screen the trellis work under the deck. Ideally you want an abundance that completely screens the trellis. Masses of forsythia can be good for that if you are ok with a tangle of yellow-yellow, or masses of hydrangea. If the porch railings and spindles aren’t plastic, consider painting them a “down” color in the green and gray range to make them disappear more, especially once you have plantings in place.

The "walk" seems to be treated timbers in the first photo and a walk in the second. Which is so? Can you show how one accesses the deck from the drive/parking on the right? Looks like bushes are blocking the way to the steps. I think ital mover has a point about moving the flower boxes to the lower windows to give them more presence, but they'll be hidden behind the deck railing. If you mow your own lawn, I'm sure you'd rather not navigate around additional shrubs/trees scattered through it. A semi-circular bed from newel post to newel post, bordered with rocks as the other foreground bed is might be a smaller solution you could handle.

To clarify: I’m suggesting moving the 2d floor window boxes to hang on the railings themselves. Don’t put them on the 1st floor windows. I’m suggesting doing this if you are keeping the railings:

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In addition I would paint the spindles and posts of the railings a gray-green, and the trellis work dark green, and mass hydrangeas in front of the trellis. I might also paint the trim of the door gray-green, and door white or the palest blue.

Ital mover; I'm a fan of hydrangeas, but they aren't going to look good in the "off season." Shouldn't she mix some evergreen shrubs in to get through the dead time?

Thank you everyone. Here is some more info that some of you were requesting:

Our first home was a small duplex with a yard a quarter the size of this. Happy to have more gardens to dig in. The lawn is in great shape and I love the trees for privacy. But they are annoying to mow around.

The deck has to stay for a while because it's relatively new and composite. The garden in front of it has a variety of perennials (irises, orange daylilies, purple and white blazing stars, welsh onion- no idea why!) in addition to the shrubs.

The perennial garden by the walkway has 3 huge blue hydrangeas, orange daylilies, columbine, and irises).

The garden that stretches the length of the property has a little bit of everything as well. Not too sure what I'm going to do about that one and how to tie it into everything else.

And then there's some perennials planted around some of the trees throughout the yard. The magnolias, apple and pear trees are all gorgeous when in bloom.

I like the idea of having flower boxes on the porch railing but I don't know if the flowers should be facing the road or facing the door for us to enjoy when we're sitting out.

Including some additional pics.

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Ital, I like the idea of the boxes on top of the railing! Surprisingly and thankfully we don't have issues with deer in our neighborhood. Evergreens don't tend to do well here, sadly. Boxwood would probably be th best shrub that doesn't look pitiful in the winter. Any suggestions on garden shape or color scheme?

Not everybody would do this but I would be tempted to plant masses of forsythia for their eye popping spring and autumn colors. In winter the bare stalks can be quite beautful covered in ice, fronts and snow — but they are a very wild-looking plant, a real “bed-head”, and if you want a landscaped look, it’s not right. If your other hydrangeas are thriving, you might want to stick with that. As I said, I think it’s fine to have a “dead season” landscape like all your neighbors.

Another possibility since fruit trees are thriving on your property, is to do an espalier of fruit trees. Could look incredibly charming and very tidy. With luck you might even get them up to the railings!

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Espalier Pear Trees · More Info

My recollection is that boxwoods take forever to grow but maybe I’m misremembering.