Newbie here and I would be most grateful for some advice on foundation plantings. I've attached a photo to this posting.

My husband tied our foundation plantings to the hitch of his truck and ripped them all out of the ground. All that is left is an arborvitae and a couple pieris japonica that are doing very well over near our garage. We are having our roof replaced soon and it will be gray. We need to start from scratch on the foundation plantings. I'm quite lost.

The house is in Zone 5b (coastal Maine). It faces northwest and the foundation plantings will get no light until 2PM, about 2 hours of sun from 2 to 4 PM and mostly shade through large oak and spruce trees from 4PM to 7PM. Our two front steps are only about knee high.

We have a septic tank in the grass only a couple feet in front of the brick walkway right in front of the front steps of the house so we cannot move the brick walkway outward into the grass or plant outside of the brick walkway. That leaves about 3.5 feet of dirt to work with between the house and the brick walkway on the side of the front steps heading toward the garage.

Facing the house, the right side of the front steps is much deeper for gardening with no concerns about septic in that area. In that spot, I planted a Seiryu japanese maple about 7 feet out from the right corner of the house; it is only a three year old tree and you can barely see it in the picture. It is really just a twig right now that appears directly below the woodpile in the picture if you look closely. I just stuck it in the ground so I can move it easily.

You can't really tell in this photo but our house is in a fairly wooded area with quite a lot of mature trees and shade bordering the property and across the street so woodland garden style with a heavy emphasis on shade is common in our neighborhood. I have shade gardens in other areas and ferns and bleeding hearts and astilbe look nice and grow well. Stuff that needs sun doesn't do that great. I also am trying to attract hummingbirds on the side and back of the house but I just started with that work so no hummingbirds yet.

Can anyone suggest some foundation planting ideas? I'm puzzled about what to do given so much shade, the need to keep foundation plantings below the windows as the house is already plenty dark inside, a narrow planting area to the one side of the front steps, and the relatively low foundation. My only idea so far is maybe a couple of green mountain boxwood to the sides of the porch. We had some tall conical arborvitae to the sides of the porch before but they were too big for the space. I would rather the house look not too cluttered and overgrown in the front. We didn't like how the arborvitae covered the lights around the front steps.

Thank you in advance for any ideas!