A low-maintenance and laid-back landscape that would complement their home-to-be was what Helen Lawlor had in mind seven years ago — as she and her husband were downsizing — with consideration for privacy and a spot for growing vegetables.

And an element she’d never considered has become one of her favorites. It’s a vase fountain in front of the home in the Eastport area of Annapolis, enhancing the welcome look.

“I love it. In the warm weather, when you open the kitchen window, you can hear the water trickling,” she said, later describing the sound as “like you live by a little brook. It’s natural — it just sort of flows.”

The sleek blue and green ceramic bubbling feature suggested by landscape architect Steve McHale, a principal in McHale Landscape Design in Upper Marlboro, recycles water through river rock. Lawlor added lantanas around it to attract more pollinators.

The fountain gives the front of the white-trimmed beige home visual balance, as the front door is out of view, said Julie Patronik, McHale’s spokeswoman. Helen Lawlor and her husband, Michael, bought the 1996 house in 2011. Renovations included landscaping that matured into a lush setting, more open in front, cozier elsewhere.

“It’s a cottage-y garden,” Helen Lawlor said. “And a cottage-style house.”

Low-maintenance shrubs — many evergreen — serve various roles as they contribute to the style: They define spaces, create borders and are foundation plantings; they foster privacy, are backdrops for other plants, and their leaves and flowers add texture and color.

The landscape is rich year-round. A winterberry trades leaves for red berries for winter holidays; in springtime, pink blooms cover evergreen azaleas; abelia provides pale flowers through the growing season; in fall, nandina starts to change color.

“I didn’t think we would have this much garden,” Lawlor said.

But they do. Lawlor said wherever she looks, she loves the view.

In the front, a flagstone walk through raised beds with dwarf boxwood borders — one bed has a summer mix of pink coneflowers and white Shasta daisies — takes guests to the house. Larger boxwoods at the home’s foundation provide a backdrop for the fountain and for long-blooming catmint, with pollinator-friendly purple flowers.

The colors are repeated near the front’s small porch in a less formal space, with the green of cherry laurels, the purple of astilbe plumes and the fuzzy silver of ground-hugging lamb’s ears.

Along the sides and in the backyard, the layered landscaping brings privacy, and shrubs are short enough to keep the area light-filled.

A path to the backyard lies between the white Annabelle hydrangeas along the house and a 4- to 5-foot rosebush hedge that runs almost the length of the property. Closer to the backyard, ankle-high painted ferns stretch around the base of Otto Luyken cherry laurels, and mazus spreads between stones.

“We have a big variety for a small lot,” Lawlor said. The lot is one-fifth of an acre.

The hedge set the palette for soft colors that Lawlor preferred.

“We started out with the pink Knock Out roses,” Lawlor recalled. The mix of purples, pinks and white “sort of evolved,” she said.

“The color choices blend and connect the garden,” McHale said via text message.

Repeat appearances of plantings, including ornamental grass and hostas, also help unify the landscape.

Lawn is limited to the backyard, defined by shrubs and perennials, both adding texture and color. Karl Foerster grass adds movement.

There’s enough lawn for gatherings with family and guests. The yard is “a place to sip wine, not throw a ball,” Lawlor said. The couple’s grandchildren enjoy roasting marshmallows when a fire pit is added in the backyard as fall approaches.

Vegetables and herbs grow along a white fence that gives the Lawlors privacy along a neighborhood path that leads to the community’s waterfront. Helen Lawlor tends the yard-to-table garden, and her husband harvests with an eye toward his specialty.

“I make salsa,” said Michael Lawlor.

A few years ago, an old oak in the backyard died. “And we said ‘Voila, look at this gift,” Helen Lawlor recounted, calling it “a perfect place for a patio.”

Designed by Emily McHale Pike, McHale’s niece, and made of irregular flagstone, it is a favorite spot for the Lawlors to relax on a teak bench and take in a view of the water. Helen Lawlor likes to read there too, with Savannah, their black lab, close by.

Nearly year-round, everyone gravitates to the screened porch with its fireplace, a room that the Lawlors built on what was a patio. The couple wanted to take in the views from there that change with the seasons, so the shrubs by the porch, blooming azaleas and nandinas, are shorter than the schip laurels farther out.

Helen Lawlor agrees with an observation one of her grandchildren made: “You can look out any window and see a pretty picture.”