Beginner Gardening: clean slate - landscape design for front of house, 0 by esadungada

esadungada wrote:
Hi, I’m a newbie here and am looking for some advice on landscape design for the front of our first house (which we recently bought). When we bought the house the yard was a total disaster. We have since had a collapsing retaining wall rebuilt, and had a scraggly hedge that was at the front of the house pulled out, so now the whole front of the house looks “naked”. We have a clean slate. I am looking for some ideas for what to plant at the front of the house (foundation garden?) and continuing along the top of the retaining wall.

Here is what we’d like:
- deer resistant plants (our house backs to a wooded area with lots of wildlife)
- hardy/easy care plants (we are beginner gardeners)
- preferably nothing that’s poisonous or has sharp thorns (we have small kids)

We would like to plant a mix of evergreens (so we won’t have just sticks in the winter) and perennials, and prefer to focus on an interesting mix of foliage for year-round interest (e.g. a mix of plants of different sizes, shapes with different leaves and stems, some variegated, etc.). Flowers would be a bonus. I am looking for a mix of plants of maximum height about 4 feet, not a monolithic block or hedge. I definitely need plants with some height along the top of the retaining wall, to keep my two young boys for falling over the top! I have been thinking of focusing on a ‘theme’ of purples and maybe yellows, or else alternatively maybe a woodland theme (since we have woods behind the house – but are there woodland-type plants that do well in the sun?). We are in zone 6b and the area we need to plant is east facing, and gets the morning sun.

We are not crazy about rhododendrons or azaleas – which is what everybody in our neighborhood has.

Some thoughts for shrubs: Euonymus fortunei ‘esmerald ‘n gold’ (which I really like), mountain laurel Kalmia latifolia (will this get too tall?), some sort of dwarf hygrangea. For smaller plants in front of the shrubs: variegated lilyturf, dwarf lavender, Nepeta walkers low. For something that will cascade over the retaining wall: Phlox subulata, Aubrieta, Saponaria ocymoides, or sweet alyssum.

I really need help on what to choose, and which combinations will work well, and will be low maintenance. The landscaping company that did our hardscaping (retaining wall, etc.) suggested just planting mountain laurel, but I would like a more varied planting. I was thinking maybe a mix of 2-3 different shrubs, a few smaller plants (a mix of heights), and something for cascading down the retaining wall.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!