This is such a huge subject! You should start with an honest assessment of your lifestyle. Your landscape should only be as big or complicated as you will enjoy maintaining or paying someone else to maintain. Everybody looks bad if you get inspired to install, get worn out putting it all in, and then fail to maintain it.
There was a time when rows of sheared shrubs, often two tiers, and alot of grass was the picturesque landscape. Not anymore. Foundation hedges has been replaced with groupings of perennial color (sometimes evergreen, but not always), ornamental grasses, and a few specimen shrubs like yaupon, mountain laurel, or crape myrtle. Every square inch doesn't have to be plants either. Columns (that were expensive to build) don't have to be covered with a tall shrub or vine. Let's assume your house isn't ugly so you don't need to cover it up, you need to feature it with the landscape.
Sometimes I like to list a bunch of plants that would grow well in a prospective landscape bed and then "cut and paste". Other times I'll place the bigger specimens, add the color, then lastly draw in the bed edge to accommodate the plantings I want. Too often builders put in the brick bed borders first and then we have to fit the planting in. That's backwards.
We help people every day! It's best if you bring in pctures on your phone.
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