6. Add lighting and hide the bins
The last two jobs are the ones that most change how the front looks on a dark evening, which in a northern winter is most of the time anyone sees it.
Start with light. Two or three low solar path lights along the route to the door cost $25 to $40 for a set and need no wiring. Space them unevenly and sparsely — a runway of twelve identical lights down both sides of a short path looks like an airport, while three placed at a curve, a step and the door looks designed. Choose warm white at 2700K rather than the cold blue-white that cheap sets default to, and buy the best you can in the budget, because bottom-end solar lights fade to useless within one winter.
Add one uplighter at the base of a tree, a shrub or the climber you just planted. A single light thrown up through foliage does more for an evening frontage than a dozen ground-level ones. A wall light or lantern beside the door is worth having too, and a plug-in one on a battery or a solar model avoids any electrical work.
Then deal with the bins, which are the thing everyone has and nobody plans for. Two or three wheelie bins parked on the front path will defeat every other upgrade on this list. Build or buy a simple slatted timber screen, use a pair of trellis panels at right angles with a climber on them, or plant a dense evergreen in a large trough as a living screen. A basic three-sided screen in treated batten costs about $60, CA$85 or £50 in materials and an afternoon to build.
Site it where the bins still get out easily on collection day. A beautiful bin store that requires lifting a bin over a step will be abandoned inside a month, and the bins will return to the path.
Finally, do the ten-minute maintenance that keeps all six upgrades looking deliberate: sweep the path, pull the weeds between the paving, wipe the door, and cut the lawn edge. Put it in the calendar for the first Saturday of each month. The difference between a front garden that looks cared for and one that does not is almost never the planting budget — it is whether someone spends ten minutes a month on the edges.