Bought a house last year and I gutted my overgrown front porch garden and cut down a tree placed too close to the home.

Now that the destruction phase is over, I'm trying to figure out the best design to replant this area. The main issue is how to address the slope of the land.

Any suggestions on this area? The one idea I considered is to build a small retaining wall (starting at red X) that wraps around the side of the house to the front, filling it with topsoil to match the level of the front yard, & put a gutter extension under the wall and out into the yard