Couple of thoughts from a practicing landscape designer............

• There is no such thing as a "no maintenance" landscape - and even low maintenance is hard to achieve without very careful consideration of plant selection.
• Black mondo grass is unlikely to be reliably hardy in zone 5 (borderline in zone 6), is pricey and quite slow to establish and spread.
• Hiring a landscape professional need not be a budget breaker and in fact could very likely save money by eliminating costly trial and error planting. An investment of a couple hundred bucks (less for an onsite consultation) could result in a significant payback down the road.

It's tough to figure out from your pics what the front lawn is.: the narrow thing that looks like a side yard? the view off the deck? the bare patch with steps in the lower right hand corner?

Low maintenance is native ground covers. The ones that do well usually volunteer, so why is that bare patch bare? Because there's too much foot traffic? Because there was a really bad drought? because the soil is really compacted/contaminated/too sandy/whatever? You need to fix that.

For the narrow side yard, I'd recommend tiarella. You can get plugs from The Pollen Nation, but you need to spend months smothering what you have there now. Then, until it fills in, weeding. For pops of color, add some shade-loving plants that bloom later. You can do some bulbs and goatsbeard. Asters for the fall --- check for shade tolerance.

Just filling in with native ferns works, too. My ferns in dry shade don't look great now, after a lot of drought, but they aren't dead, either. My ferns volunteered. The best way to cheap plants that do well in whatever awful conditions you have is to get a good book, identify what has volunteered and shape it to your liking.

That said, if you want some wow, pay a designer and implement the design yourself --- but this will be several years of work.

I’m not familiar with zone 5 so can’t reccommend specific plants. I just want to suggest you take out all straight edges and create a gently curved path that leads the eye to the gorgeous view ahead.

The Quarry House · More Info

I have a very similar lot in MI too. We have a deck and are along a river. Bear in mind, that the big trees are a wonderful asset but their roots are far reaching and suck a lot of nutrients out of the soil. Compost your lawn debris on site and amend the soil with compost to help the understory plantings survive.

Daisies and sedums need sun, and you don't have that in a big supply. But there are plants that might grow in the shade that have similar qualities to daisies and sedums that you might be able to substitute. If you love happy white flowers, you can grow spring flowering wildflowers like wood anemone or sweet woodruff or lily of the valley or goat's beard (much prettier than the name would imply) or a white flowering astilbe. There are also white cultivars of bleeding heart and another white wildflower called "Squirrel corn" and also "Dutchman's Breeches." And later, wood asters can also take shade. There are even fragrant while flowering hosta like "Guacamole" for example. Smells like jasmine. Find a good perennial nursery, particularly one specializing in wildflowers.

Also, you can really punch up the garden with white flowering annuals like impatiens and begonias. I have some spectacular ones in my yard right now.

As for red, if that's what you like about sedums, I have some very dramatic coleus (an annual) and also many types of begonias come in a whole host of red and pink and coral shades. Columbine and astilbe are other examples of red flowering perennials. Some heuchera has red bells for flowers, but also many varieties with red decorative foliage. I have those growing in my garden. They can also take some sun.

If you crave sun loving perennials, find the sunniest spot in your yard and put in a big raised bed planter or just big planter. I've even heard of people putting the planter on wheels so they can move it around to catch the most sun during the day. I grew tomatoes in pots in a little red wagon that way one year. I was outside all the time so easily moved them around during the day to follow maximum sun . . . If I forgot one day was not the end of the world, although you do need to be consistent. Mine was in front of one side of my garage, so I only needed to move it if I needed to get something out of that side of the garage . . .

Another thing that Doug's design reminded me of, if you have trouble fitting in all the flowering plants under your trees due to competition for soil nutrients, then you can grow more stuff in big pots placed under the trees. I did that at my last house because I loved trees but had limited space. I grew colorful annuals in pots under the trees to add variety.

If you like colored grasses, there are gads of NATIVE grasses that have colorful leaves, like "Burgundy Bunny" dwarf fountain grass and also purple lovegrass. Muhly grass is another native stunner with pink flowers. For the blues, there is little bluestem and blue fescue are two common examples . . . Frankly for my blues, I love some of the matting blue evergreens like star juniper. They need lots of sun though . . .

A common trick if you can't afford a designer is to spend some time in the library perusing the landscaping and garden books and find "inspiration" photos you like and try to copy the look. Also, you can do the same online with a little creative use of a search engine. That's how I do a lot of my landscaping. I'm putting in a patio right now, for example, and almost the exact look I was going for popped up on my Houzz feed one day. I saved the photo to show to my installer when trying to describe the job.

Here's a great blog on white flowering plants that can take some shade, for example. You could punch up some of these same ideas with just a few red flowering or red foliage plants. Although there aren't many red flowering shade perennials, there are many beautiful red leaved shade tolerant plants, like Japanese maples, which are one of my favorites. You can grow those in big pots too, with a little creative insulation for winter . . .

White garden part shade

Doug's ideas are pretty, but I don't think the sedum or coneflowers will thrive in the shade and privet (ligistrum) is invasive. If you want lime plants, do lime heuchera.

The ligustrum shown is sterile.