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TarHeels (and whoever else): pics of our yard
Thanks for your help!!! Sorry for the delay. Both camera batteries were dead, then it was raining, then my computer ate my whole post!!! AHHHH!!
Here's some more views of the house. I will say as far as height goes for the porch bed, I want to keep it somewhat low so that we can keep an eye on the girls playing in the parking lot. It was one of the main reasons we tore everything out to begin with.
Here are a couple views of the front right side of the front door.
Here's to the left of the front door.
This is the side of the house that is actually what is seen from the road. We are not planning on doing anything here this summer.
This is from the right side of the driveway spanning over our side yard, which is the area we actually can use. The small bed between the drive and the walk way used to have a huge hedge that came over the driveway about 1.5 feet.
The bed under the big tree is very overgrown. Don't know what we will do there. It's all shade on this side.
There ya go!! i hope this helps get a feel for the space a little. It's very overwhelming to say the least. 
Thanks for your help!!!
Re: TarHeels (and whoever else): pics of our yard
If you think it might cause a ruckus to take out the square bed, could you expand it and soften it into more of an amoeba shape?
Oh, and in regards to the "artichokes" I've seen them called Hens and Chicks. They'll kind of spread (slowly, not invasive) and fill in over time. They're very low care and drought tolerant. So if you like them, let them be. Out here it's getting popular to grow them vertically:
Bit of a different look, eh?
"The meek shall inherit the earth" isn't about children. It's about deer. We're all going to get messed the fuckup by a bunch of cloned super-deer.- samfish2bcrab
Sometimes I wonder if scientists have never seen a sci-fi movie before. "Oh yes, let's create a super species of deer. NOTHING COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG." I wonder if State Farm offers a Zombie Deer Attack policy. -CaliopeSpidrman
Depending on how much money you want to spend the very first thing I would do is remove the cement sidewalk to the right of the garage and install a more curvilinear shaped walkway. Bed shaping is key to the overall feel of your landscape design. There's a lot of work to be done here but it all starts with a good foundation of bed shaping and soil preparation.
As far as plant selection goes, I would not use more than 10 different kinds of plants in your overall landscape design and would focus on groupings/mass plantings. Landscape design is a complicated, in depth process!
I know you said you didn't love evergreens, but they should be the foundation of your design, esp somewhere like Michigan where things only bloom a couple months a year. There are some with great texture. It doesn't have to be just average ol' hollies. Remember the two or three layers we talked about.
One combo I think would look nice would be evergreens of your choosing in the back and then a row of roses in the front. If I may, I'm a HUGE fan of Flower Carpet roses over Knock-Outs. KOs are ugly when not in bloom and don't have a pretty form. FCs have lush, bright green foliage and bloom non-stop in nice weather. In the fall, you cut them down to 10", which I presume is enough to be covered by snow there so no ugly dead plants visible.
Remember to make your beds wavy, no straight lines.
You'll need vertical elements on the corners of your house. You have that lilac you can use on one corner. Pull it out 6' or so diagonally. I don't know what to put next to your door where there's that big expanse of siding for the second story - I hate to default to an arborvitae, but maybe something like it, then repeat your evergreen shrubs with roses around it.
I wouldn't plant shrubs directly in front of the basement window. I'd leave that spot for annuals and plant shrubs on either side. Don't remove the existing shrubs until you can afford to replace them.
You'll want something special and dramatic on either side of the walk by the front door. Look back at the pics I posted in the other post - one house had palms (obviously won't do lol) and the other had hydrangea (also won't do because they need shade). It'd be a great spot to put something flowering or scented so your guests smell it as they walk up. Or maybe just an easy care grass - pretty movement and organic form for variety.
Liriope is your friend. Edge special places like the aforementioned special plants by the walk with it and the lilac on the corner of the house. (Or all of it if your parishioners give you gobs of it lol.)
I have no idea what to put on that driveway strip! A row of arborvitae/skyrocket junipers would be dullsville, but I can't think of anything else skinny enough.
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To the first poster, I think we wanted to wait another year before tearing out the square bed. We are finishing our second year here so we don't want to make someone really mad right off the bad. So I think I will just do some prep work this year and make it look as good as I can. Oh, and the vertical gardens are crazy!!
To the second poster, I had another post below this one explaining that we live in our church parsonage so we are pretty limited to what we can do. Things like ripping out cement just won't fly unless we get it approved and even then it would be out of our pocket. We just don't have the funds for that right now.
TarHeels, thank you thank you thank you!! This was AWESOME! I feel like I can easily go out and accomplish this now!!
I love love love the roses you linked. Is that something I would probably need to order online or through a catalog?? I LOVE them!
I'm in a constant battle with DH about what goes in front of the window. That is his office window and he appreciates the privacy that the plants give him but I want it opened up.Hopefully I can convince him.
When you were talking on either side of the walkway by the door, your talking still in the beds correct?? I saw in one of the photo's you posted how the bed comes out/up a little bit with the "special" stuff - should I do the same you think? On the right side of the door i have a dwarf burning bush that I planted in the fall. Should I move that somewhere else??
I like the edging with the liriope idea. I think that will look really nice.
I'm not too concerned with that small strip by the driveway. With that row of hedge the borders our yard and the parking lot, it's not really that noticeable to people driving by. Right now I have a couple of the smallest boxwoods in there. Was that a totally horrible choice??
Again, your help has been AWESOME!! I'm sure I will be coming back with more specific plant questions. I got stuck taking a detour this morning in our area and "found" two nurseries out int he country a bit so I'm really excited to get out and see what people have!
Oh and I think we will be tearing the shrubs by the door out this weekend. We have a church work day so we will have someone use their truck to pull them out. MUCH easier than when we did all the other ones by hand (and be we I mean DH
. So I think we will go ahead and get that bed done as well. If you can believe it, we already ripped one out that was right next to the porch. It was causing issues with our downspout right there so DH pulled it out last year. I will be happy to see the others go now too 
Thanks again!!
The website says where you can the FCs. They're only sold when they're blooming, so they're only just now arriving to my area in 7b/8a, so you may want to call around and see if the nurseries expect to carry them later this summer. You can get them online at one source that's on the site.
If your DH really wants something in front of the window, maybe put just the roses without the evergreen backing.
By your door, you'll want to pull your beds out/down the sidewalk a bit, so beyond the railings maybe 2 ft or so. Imagine a curve that continues your bed from the house down the walk a bit. That's where you want the special stuff. The "problem" with burning bush is that it's deciduous, so you'll be greeting your winter guests with dead sticks. I'm not terribly familiar with what grows around there, but walk around the nurseries and see if there's anything that has winter features. I know there's some sort of dogwood shrub that greets winter guests with dead red sticks, so if you have a thing for sticks, maybe that's an option
Whenever you're doing big picture landscape, you want to keep repeating the same plants. Don't buy just one of anything. I expect for this you'll be buying 20 of X and 18 of Y, etc.
Boxwoods are just fine by the driveway
When you're doing your new curved bed, you may have noticed in that one illustration that the guy had out a garden hose. That's a great way to imagine your beds before you start digging. You can stand back from the street and really see what they'll look like. I guarantee when you first do it you'll think your beds are WAY too big, but if you read your plant tags and leave enough space for mature plant sizes, you'll see that the bed's just right. And you'll get used to your beds soon enough.
Go play on monrovia.com and do their plant search. You can just read about different things that are available that you may be unfamiliar with. (Esp good since I can't recommend plants for Michigan!)
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Again, thank you so much! Such great information and so helpful - do you do this for a living? Landscaping?? Or just as a big hobby?
I will have to check around for the roses. I absolutely LOVE them. And if they aren't available until later this summer, that might be a help to break up the cost of things.
I'll have to start looking for the evergreens first that I would like to put in the back and what to do by the walkway for the special stuff...
I'm not sure if you can see it correctly in one of the pictures, but the foundation corner where you suggested putting the lilac 6 feet out, there is a large tree right in that area. I'm not familiar with how big the lilac's get - will that be a problem?? Is 6 feet a must?
I'm sure more questions will be coming in the future
The large tree I was talking about is in the 4th picture down I believe, you can see the location of two trees. I guess they are further out than I thought so I'm guessing it won't be a problem??
We have SOOO many old and dying trees on our property that we are just praying will eventually get cut down by some nice members. One can hope right??
If money is tight try finding some local plant swaps in your area (similar to the church donation idea the pp mentioned above). Most you don't have to actually bring any plants as they are just divisions local gardeners have done of their perennials that are getting too big. That is where you'll find the easy to grow plants but be careful to not get anything invasive to your area.
Like one of the pp said if money is tight and you can't afford paint for the shutters the price of decent shrubs (ie: non-fast growing ones like you currently have which will take over your house) is going to scare you. Just work on one flower bed at a time like the one on the right side and you can tear out the rest later. You have more than enough work to do for one year. You can always just plant a few annuals in front of the existing shrubs for the time being. They will be a lot cheaper than perennials anyway. They will give you that nice pop of color all season long that you said you wanted and give instant sanctification. Perennials take a while to fill in and generate a lot of blooms so if you don't plan to live there a while I wouldn't invest too much on more expensive perennials.
For the lilac, you definitely need to know. When it blooms, take the blooms into your extension office and ask if they can identify the variety. Lilacs can get as big as full trees or stay like small shrubs. Variety matters a LOT.
I said pull it out at a diagonal to account for the trees, but you're there on the ground and I'm not, so it may not work. This suggestion won't look too swell if it's a shrub variety and not a small tree variety because it'll just be sitting out there on a peninsula all by itself.
Truly, the $50 or $100 for a pro to help with plans would be money very well spent.
And no, I have no qualifications! lol I'm just the crazy lady who's owned 4 homes in 5 years, so ya kinda learn what looks good and what works where. I've learned what I've learned from my master gardener MIL, lots of googling, library books, and killing a certain number of plants! lol I'm certainly no pro - I've hit a dead-end in planning out my own backyard and my MIL isn't sure where to go either, so I myself have a guy coming out next Friday to do up a garden plan.
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Fox, thanks for the swap tip. I'll have to ask around and see if we have anything like that around here. Are those common?? I also like the idea of putting some annuals in front of some of the existing shrubs to get by for now.
TarHeels, the lilac is a Miss Kim Lilac. The tag says it will grow 6-7' x 6-7'. Will that be OK still in that spot??
Here is the plan right now. We are going to work on the bigger bed this summer and save the side in front of the window for next year. We will buy as much stuff as we can this summer but may need to fill in more next summer as well depending.
I went out and cut down the two shrubs out on the corner of the house this afternoon in prep for the lilac. They will get torn out this weekend on our church work day with someones truck. I left the two that are right in front of the window and will leave those until next year.
I was thinking of transplanting the low lying plant that is on the far right of the porch bed to the side of the house that faces the street. There is one over there all by itself, so this one will even out the space. I was thinking of maybe putting the burning bush over there as well?? That spot gets more shade though - does it need full sun??
It felt so good to tear out some more of those overgrown shrubs today!
for tall and thin shrubs for that driveway strip, try individual privets. I know most people like to clump them together and make a hedge, but I just planted a few of them in places around my deck where I need tall but narrow growth. They have nice white flowers in the spring and you can trim/shape them as you wish.
just a thought.