Shade garden?

(With apologies to @Dig Doug; the birdbath is his signature!)

Notes: With the busy stone pattern on the house wall, the garden will need to be strong and simple (simpler than this, probably), with larger rather than smaller masses of plants. I also find that it helps to think of the landscape as a place, rather than as decoration against the house. The garden is a place to enjoy; the house is a large object in that larger living space.

You have a lovely setting!

Here is a variant with the stone toned down (with diluted, sponged-on mid-tone paint on the lightest and darkest stones?). Notice how the wall recedes into the background, letting the garden shine.

These ideas ard lovely. i need to add that in the summer the front of the cottage gets the hot afternoon sun, so would need to steer away from shade garden plants.

One of the drawbacks of online advice: we only know what we see or are told. Location, orientation, and surroundings/context are important. But these layout ideas could be used with different plants.

Yes and I love making the front into more of a garden setting. A sidewalk would add charm and definition. I’m ready to get started, but must wait for cooler weather.

One of the problems with apps that add garden is that everything is in bloom at once. In DigDoug's pic, of the plants I can identify, he has coneflowers, which bloom in mid-to-late summer in bloom at the same time as Iris, which is a spring bloomer. Simplenatural does the same thing with Astilbe and hosta. So, if you go with either of those designs, be aware that you garden won't look like their very pretty pictures.

And, in fact, for all we know, there's a season when your garden under the window is full of blooms. I'd start by IDing what you have and going from there.

Very good advice. Thank you.

@Sigrid's comment above puzzles me a bit, because (a) the hostas in my rendering are not shown in bloom but only in leaf (the brighter green ones, at least; the darker also look like hostas and yes, they are in bloom; I chose that image for plant form/color and didn't pay much attention to the flowers) and (b) hosta and astilbe is a classic shade garden combination that does indeed look like this when the astilbe flowers. Just google "hosta and astilbe" to see many unedited photos of this combination. Here's one from gardenia.net with a hosta just coming into bloom and astilbes in full bloom.

But that's a moot point, since we now know that this area is too sunny for hosta/astilbe to thrive.

I'd also like to say that drawing a picture of a proposed design is the standard way that designers communicate their ideas. In years past, they used pencils and paints, while today we use a computer, but the communication method is the same. "Worth a thousand words" as they say.