I am about to start buying plants for a revamped foundation planting for our Maine home. We've removed all the overgrown shrubs and a decrepit old deck, dumped 5 yards of compost, and are ready to start buying plants. Hoping for your input!

Review:
house is in Maine, will be shingled and painted in light beigey-grey, sort of a coastal cottage look. We removed a large deck off the bedroom french doors, and instead it will have a simple railing across it ("juliette balcony"). Garage will have trellis with clematis.
Objectives:
1) Make front door more prominent (currently it is visually lost and unused). To that end, the recessed doorway area will be sided in a different material, and an informal flagstone walkway will lead up the hill to the main road. (Family uses side door, which is next to the garage door in the lower left.)
2) Low budget (aprox $1000) and low maintenance plantings.
3) All season interest re: spring flowering trees, summer grasses and perennials, fall foliage and fruit, fruit and red bark and shapes in winter.
4) Would love some edible landscaping to compliment backyard organic garden and fruit.. re: hybrid blueberry bushes.
5) Would love something with summer (sometime in june/July/Aug?) fragrance near the bedroom french doors.
6) Spring bulbs and something frangrant near the family entrance lower left (new porch to be built). Also- the oil fill is at the far right of that porch, behind the proposed crabapple.

So far, we're fairly set on using:
small magnolia on the SE corner as shown, Ann, Jane, Ricki, or one similar.
small crabapple on S corner. Local nurseries have recommended 'Tina'
hydrangeas x2, have existing to replant. Annabelle, Endless Summer type. I like the winter interest of the canes...
peonies, have about 6 or 8, after dividing existing, mature plants.

and the rest of the list, which so far do not have set locations, is:

Evergreen: fairly open, natural, narrow, not more than 8' H.. possibly Falce Cypresses like Gracilis, Filicoides...
Fothergilla
Blueberry- hybrid types 3-4' high
Winterberry
Arctic Fire Dogwood
Cotoneaster and/or Bearberry underplanting the crabapple and/or magnolia
Cranesbill Geranium
Nepeta
Globe Allium
Spring bulbs
Tall grasses for initial height and winter interest

Here is a sketch of the house as seen from the corner of the two streets, BARE- no plantings.

QUESTIONS
1) What should go in that corner where the two arms of the house meet? I do not want to block the window, so it would need be about 4' wide. I feel like it needs something with a little height there, no? Evergreen? Other?

2) What should flank the front entry? Two shrubs of the same type? About 3-4' high? I was thinking small winterberry for the great red winter berries, but maybe they're too bland the rest of the year? I don't want it super formal... it should be casual, coastal, natural but also somewhat neat.

3) Recommendations for frangrant things next to the side door porch and the bedroom french doors?

4) Recommendations of which to plant where, heights, etc?

Here's the plan I am working with right now... open to changes!!

and a sketch with some of the above plants drawn in at near-mature size.

Thanks for your comments :)

Flanking the front entry, would you consider a couple of tallish urns? Plant them with seasonal interest and I think it'd be great!

I'm not sure about that magnolia. Here, the bloom is short lived and the foliage is sparse thereafter. What about echoing the tree-form Crab with possibly a lilac tree-form, like Miss Kim? Or, since you want fragrance next to the porch, do the lilac TREE over there and bring the crab to the other corner.

I just took a garden design workshop on Saturday. And what they'd have told me about this plan is that it's a bit mish-mash. For greater impact, you'd be best to group the individual plantings.... ie... 3 hydrangeas together under a window....

Another bush is the Regent Saskatoon Serviceberry (Amelanchier alnifolia 'Regent')they get height4-6' width 4-8' they are green but are supposed to be covered in white blooms in spring. They have edible berries that I was told taste a little like apple. Another bush I acquired only last year. So far they seem fine but they only just budding here now in The County.

If you are looking for more info on blueberries you can ask local farms. I don't know where you are but I know every county has some sort of website to the major local farms.

http://www.pickyourown.org/ME.htm

I also know that the coast has different growing zones than from inland. When I lived in K-port things grew very differently than N. Berwick.(I know one is more southern than the other but I can only compare where I have lived :)

Good luck I hope I helped a fellow Mainer.

If so, good planning!
If not, rethink your timetable and put your planning efforts and money into grading, walkways, lighting for safety and ....I have to say it....the parking space.

Then the trees and shrubs, because they take a while to mature. You can always fill in annuals the first season or two...

Just something to consider, among the other suggestions you'll get.

I was interested in alcyaddimo's suggestions for Maine... then my planning took a bit of a different turn! I'd been casting about, thinking, "eh, that'll look OK..." and acquired a few plants: Betty Magnolia, Tina Crabapple, and a small White Cedar hybrid. All of sudden I was like, "Eureka!" because I realized that what I really wanted to do was recreate the look and feel of some other existing beds on the property. They were planted in the late 50's/early 60's and have a sort of Asian/Jetsons feel to them. Very appropriate to the house, really. So now I am looking at more Asian/Japanese feeling plants. (I was already going to replant the tons of peonies existing, so that'll go really well!) I'm going to look at Japanese Maples today, and Kousa Dogwood. I think I will put the Japanese Maple and Cedar in the corner, the magnolia on the blank 8' wall of the house where an evergreen is now drawn, and a smaller variety of kousa dogwood on the corner where I drew the magnolia. I know I will have to watch the maple in winter, but it's a VERY protected little corner there, so I'm hoping it will do OK. :)

idabean, Yes, there's existing hardscaping that's fine for now, and I am installing the front path and steps this summer. I'm anxious to get the backbone trees and shrubs started this spring, though!