"Low maintenance" planting beds for in front of a home business [View all]

A small company I am working with has a house they inherited on some farm property. It is a lofted log cabin with sky lights and just a basic porch across the front and the front door right in the middle. There is a circular driveway, fine gravel, about 7' off the porch so a path from that to the door goes right between 2 planting beds, each about 6' x 11'

They agreed to let me landscape it (I'm an apartment renter so I have pent up gardening in me) but asked that it be "low maintenance". I suggested that the planter beds are actually the best place for any high maintenance plants since we have easy access to them and may even just weed or tend while talking outside but that was not well received. There are two giant "meatball" bushes at the outside corners of the porch and one is dead so I want to take out both and have suggested something evergreen since we live in a 4-season environment here.

We host lunches, meetings and job interviews in this house so I liked the idea of doing a kind of herb garden and a potage out front. I wanted all italian/french/english herbs on one side and asian and new world on the other. Rosemary, mints, sage, etc I like edible landscape stuff so I would replace the meatballs with raspberry bushes/trees. We also talked about planting in containers like farm crates that were lined and then filled with soil. We could have extra containers going in the greenhouse and rotate them for the season or to just refresh them.

So none of my ideas are low maintenance. I don't want to create work for someone else but I'm struggling to come up with low maintenance landscaping that I can love. All I have so far is: something that vines and stays low for the base layer, a couple containers with an easy herb or two (like mint, sage, thyme) for the middle layer and some perennial flowers like black eyed susans for a top layer that has some pop.

I welcome any suggestions or experience you may want to share for what has worked and is low maintenance. Also I am stuck on the vining plant so would love any suggestions for that. We are Zone 5A, Hudson River Valley.

a big THANKS.