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Hi everyone! I am new to the forum and a new home owner. We purchased a Chicago Bungalow with three overgrown, leggy arbor vitae in the front. I would dearly love to redo the foundation planting but we are a litte short of funds right now (we are focusing on planting our raised beds and replacing our gutters). It is south facing but fairly shady in the summer due to the large trees on our street. I have been trying to find images of foundation plantings that compliment our architecture with little success. Does anyone have any suggestions or resources I should look into? Our house is south facing but is somewhat shady in the summer because of the large trees on our street. We are in Zone 5. Thanks!
[url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/23660554@N03/5594187168/][img]https://farm6.static.flickr.com/5177/5594187168_01af63eda1.jpg[/img][/url]
[url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/23660554@N03/5594187168/]P1020062[/url] by [url=https://www.flickr.com/people/23660554@N03/]arkowalsky[/url], on Flickr
[url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/23660554@N03/5594187790/][img]https://farm6.static.flickr.com/5063/5594187790_a4b0070139.jpg[/img][/url]
[url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/23660554@N03/5594187790/]P1020066[/url] by [url=https://www.flickr.com/people/23660554@N03/]arkowalsky[/url], on Flickr

Well to start with I would expand the foundation planting area out (make it wider). You have a big, kind of massive looking house. The narrow strip of planting up against it is out of scale.

Then I would make a mixed planting of shrubs including some evergreen and some flowering, in different heights. Eventually you can fill in with some low growing perennials around/ in front of them.

Here's some suggestions for native shrubs that would tolerate the shadiness. Because they are native, once established they will be hardy and easy care, and they are attractive to birds and butterflies:

serviceberry (tons of birds love these berries), viburnum (exceptionally fragrant flowers in spring, berries that birds like, attractive to butterflies), bearberry, carolina allspice, ceanothus, red twig dogwood (not evergreen, but the red stems are beautiful in winter against snow), hydrangea, sweetspire, spicebush. For evergreens: creeping juniper, azalea, kalmia. Winterberry is our native holly. It isn't evergreen, but it keeps brilliant red berries through much of the winter.

You can't (unfortunately! ) do all of them, but look them up and pick a selection of several. Some of them you will find in good local nurseries, some you might have to order on-line. Sometimes on line, you can find them pretty cheap. They will be small then and it will take a few years of patience and care before they fill out and look like much, but it's a way to do it on a low budget.