Help! I am clueless at this - what should I plant?

Hey a question for me! Woot!

Full disclosure, my wife and I (53m) are amateur gardeners. We have a nice English style garden on our tiny postage stamp of property.

First some questions for you.

What are you going for? Flowers, bushes, trees in that area? What is there now? Hard for me to really tell from that photo.

Where are you located? More specifically what is your area's USDA zone? As an example, I am in south central Wisconsin and we are zones 4/5.

How much sun does that area get? Are there trees nearby that might block morning, or afternoon sun? That photo shows full sun when it was taken.

Based on your answers above, I might have more questions. Just an FYI.

Something you can do is take that photo to a local gardening center and show them that photo. A good garden center will always have an old pro that gives great advice. Just avoid going to the big box stores, unless you know exactly what you are looking for and are bargain hunting.

Ok, for some reason your text didn't show up when I initially looked at your post and I missed you saying those are laurel bushes.

They tend to zone 6 to 9 although one variety (Portuguese I think) is 7 to 9. So I'm going to assume you are south of Kentucky.

Most laurels require trimming and a lot of it as they are hedge bushes. So the closer you plant other things, the more you will need to trim. My suggestion would be at least 3 to 4 feet out, at the minimum.

I'm in a lot colder clime so let look to see if anything in my garden would work for you. Irises and Lillie's are great And bloom at different times.

ground cover like moss or something that wont spread really fast