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If the site has wodland along its edges, it makes sense to use native understory plants to extend the woodland into the site to restore disturbed areas that you do not need to keep open and do not want to maintain. In my area I often have a parking lot or driveway that cuts into the woods and there is only a few feet of disturbed area. The trees and the woods look fine, but that edge looks odd, so infilling with more of the same understory makes it look like there was no disturbance around the edges after a year or two. In my area that is usually lowbush blueberry, clethra, arrowwood, inkberry, and others.
I think that Lanelle sums it up with the "right plant/right place". Look for drought tolerant plants if there is no irrigation. But if there is irrigation your plant choices could be entirely different.
Think about snow removal, so don't put woody plants that will break in harms way. Winter Creeper Euonymus types or even daylilies can better in parking planting islands than junipers if there is adequate water.
I think ornamental grasses planted in bigger areas really look bad without good maintenance. They are low on demands for themselves like water and shearing, but they leave you with beds to take care of.
I think that you need to think about long term vs. sort term maintenance as well. In this case it sounds like you should be more worried about the shorter term and the survivability of the plants rather than what kind of pruning will be needed five or ten years from now.
Having to cut grass is a pretty well expected maintenance thing. Unless the site will have no lawn at all, I'd suggest using lawn to restore as much of the disturbed area as reasonably possible. Maintenance is usually let go in the treatment of open areas in planting beds - as in weed control. The least amount of left over open mulch areas, the better. That means that larger faster growing shrubs make a lot of sense as long as they are not going to cause other nuisances with sight lines or the building. That is why mass plantings of the same shrub is often done. Plants of the same type still look fine as they grow into each other, but less so when they are of different types.
Goal number one is to make sure what you plant survives.
Number two (can I say number two on this website?) is to keep plants from causing problems as they grow without maintenance by choosing the right plant for the right space.
Number three is to reduce the opportunity for weed growth by reducing open beds.
These are not plant names, but concepts that will help you choose plants.
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