Darling house! Love all the land and pretty green grass. Just needs a little color, but you have great bones to start with.
I would use large rocks to circle the trees in the foreground and toss in some cedar mulch to keep things tidy.
Choose an area and start a flower bed. Maybe add in some tasteful yard art. Add a couple colorful pots with flowers or small patio trees with flowers - annuals that you can with the season.
Decorative large flower pots with trailing vines under the window on th left would look good. May be the same height pot under the small window but with a vine on sticks to grow up. A flower pot between the other door and window with a thin tree in it. Maybe the same on the other side for a match in that area and an under the window planter similar to the first window. For the look of the house I wood go for tin pots buckets and or wash tubs or maybe milk cans for the two windows under the windows with trailing vines in them.
Don't know your climate so I can't give you specific plants. I would use tall, slender plants, shrubs or dwarf trees on the corner s of the house. I would recommend interspacing low level plants and/or flowers with medium-sized bushes/shrubs. I would use bushes that have color, other than green, in a season when your low plants and flowers are less striking. Thus, maximizing the amount of color time. I would plant a dwarf tree where the house breaks. This will break up the horizontal lines. Make sure and plant every thing far enough away from the deck so you can do maintenance on both the deck and your plantings once they are full grown. Be creative with the color. GOOD LUCK
Your photo implied you were looking for landscape suggestions. I think you should expand the bed near the street over the winter. Get more rocks to use for the expanded border. Next spring you can add small to medium shrubs and various perennials suitable for part shade. Remember that all plants take time to grow; the impact is not going to be immediate. Fill in with annuals for at least the first year. You already have a row of shrubs in front of your home. They will also take time to grow, so fill in between them with annuals. Zone 8 climates can use cool-season annuals such as viola and pansy, snapdragons, dianthus and sweet alyssum, will bloom through fall and winter into spring. Deadhead spent blooms. If you live in zone 7 check with your local nursery for info on cool season plants to add color through winter. Cornflower, larkspur, and calendula can be sown in the fall and will stay low until spring when they start to grow and bloom quickly.
Since you also want a porch, I say hire a carpenter. You need a gable roof addition, and that is not something you can DIY. In the link below is a picture of how this is framed, but one needs to know how to use a framing square to figure the proper angles of cuts. Note also that in the picture the porch supports go down to the ground. You can't just set supports on top of your deck without thinking about what's under them. Some additional deck framing might also be necessary. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/15/41/59/1541593eff740f799e0bed36211e7eb5.png
We've in the process of building a porch onto the front and side of our house (wraparound). We have the porch floor on, and now we're stuck, trying to decide which wo...
See more
We have a deck that we spent three weekends re-doing with a HGTV recommended deck restoration product that peeled in 9 months. Cleaned and scraped, replaced rotted bo...
See more
Flowers shrubs landscaping
Darling house! Love all the land and pretty green grass. Just needs a little color, but you have great bones to start with.
I would use large rocks to circle the trees in the foreground and toss in some cedar mulch to keep things tidy.
Choose an area and start a flower bed. Maybe add in some tasteful yard art. Add a couple colorful pots with flowers or small patio trees with flowers - annuals that you can with the season.
Decorative large flower pots with trailing vines under the window on th left would look good. May be the same height pot under the small window but with a vine on sticks to grow up. A flower pot between the other door and window with a thin tree in it. Maybe the same on the other side for a match in that area and an under the window planter similar to the first window. For the look of the house I wood go for tin pots buckets and or wash tubs or maybe milk cans for the two windows under the windows with trailing vines in them.
Thank you. Some of these suggestions I have in progress. Others are great. Any ideas how I could maybe add a covered porch?
Don't know your climate so I can't give you specific plants. I would use tall, slender plants, shrubs or dwarf trees on the corner s of the house. I would recommend interspacing low level plants and/or flowers with medium-sized bushes/shrubs. I would use bushes that have color, other than green, in a season when your low plants and flowers are less striking. Thus, maximizing the amount of color time. I would plant a dwarf tree where the house breaks. This will break up the horizontal lines. Make sure and plant every thing far enough away from the deck so you can do maintenance on both the deck and your plantings once they are full grown. Be creative with the color. GOOD LUCK
CHUCK
Your photo implied you were looking for landscape suggestions. I think you should expand the bed near the street over the winter. Get more rocks to use for the expanded border. Next spring you can add small to medium shrubs and various perennials suitable for part shade. Remember that all plants take time to grow; the impact is not going to be immediate. Fill in with annuals for at least the first year. You already have a row of shrubs in front of your home. They will also take time to grow, so fill in between them with annuals. Zone 8 climates can use cool-season annuals such as viola and pansy, snapdragons, dianthus and sweet alyssum, will bloom through fall and winter into spring. Deadhead spent blooms. If you live in zone 7 check with your local nursery for info on cool season plants to add color through winter. Cornflower, larkspur, and calendula can be sown in the fall and will stay low until spring when they start to grow and bloom quickly.
Since you also want a porch, I say hire a carpenter. You need a gable roof addition, and that is not something you can DIY. In the link below is a picture of how this is framed, but one needs to know how to use a framing square to figure the proper angles of cuts. Note also that in the picture the porch supports go down to the ground. You can't just set supports on top of your deck without thinking about what's under them. Some additional deck framing might also be necessary. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/15/41/59/1541593eff740f799e0bed36211e7eb5.png