Mid-Atlantic Gardening: landscaping front of house - clean slate!, 1 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 and continuing along the top of the retaining wall.

Ideally, we’d like plants with winter interest that are deer-resistant and easy to care for. Preferably nothing that’s poisonous or has sharp thorns (as we have small kids). We’re not crazy about azaleas/rhododendrons, but are open to anything else (especially native plants).

We are in zone 6b and the area we need to plant is east facing, and gets the morning sun.

Any ideas much appreciated!