Patio Flower Beds - part 2

Still working on the flower beds around my patio.  You can check out part 1 HERE. 

Here are some before shots:

I've already started cutting down some of the bushes I'll be removing so that's why they look a bit weird.

 It was just a mess of overgrown bushes and ivy run wild.

One of the bushes is all prickly.  Seriously look at these thorns!  Yikes, one of my kids could get hurt, so that bush (actually there are 3 of them around the patio) has to be removed.

After:

It looks so much better, I love the open space.

  We sometimes jump over the flower beds to take a shortcut from the patio door to the playset, so I'm planning to put some steping stones here.:

And as for these bushes.  They are two that have grown together, but I'm leaving them that way.  The one on the right has a strong root system and I don't feel like trying to dig it out.  It doesn't look too bad does it?  Should we prune it to look like one bush or two?  I'm afraid if we prune it to look like two bushes, the one on the right will be very skinny and odd looking.  So for now, it's staying like that.

And now for some side by side comparisons, well they would be side by side if I could figure out how to do that:

Before:

After:

Before:

After: