Tree number two looks like an ash of some kind. You can search for trees (and other plants) online at the link below. All the choices would be appropriate for our location in the low desert. Just click on the 'plants' tab and select by common or botanical name and choose the characteristics you want. Good luck. Here is a link that might be useful: Water Wise Plants

My cats have been OK with the tree this year. They do some damage to the bottom branches by pouncing and batting at them and tear off the low-hanging ornaments, but we always put our cheap, nearly indestructible stuff towards the bottom. Here's a joke I found this year that I thought was so, so true! How to Cat-Proof Your Christmas Tree 1. Buy a cardboard box big enough to hold the tree. Paint it red and yellow. Paste pictures of cats playing with toys on the box. Write phrases on the box like: "Giant very expensive cat toy." "Your cat will LOVE it!" "No cat can resist!" "Hours and hours of fun!" "Only $99,999, 999.99!" 2. Bring the tree home inside the box, and round up your cats. Say, "look what mommy got you! A giant, really really expensive cat toy! You will go NUTS! I can't wait to see you play with this!" 3. Force the cats to watch you put up the tree and decorate it. If they drift off towards the cardboard box, bring them back to the tree and point at it while saying things like "you had better play with this thing, mommy spent a month's salary on it." 4. When the tree is decorated, wave some branches in their face and shout, "come on and play! Lookee here, the branches move, see? Kitty is supposed to swat at the branches and have lots and lots of fun! Hey, come back here! You come back here right now and play with this tree. See how much fun it is? HEY. I'M TALKING TO YOU. Get out of that box right now, mister. The box is NOT a toy. THIS is the toy." If you do this with enough sincerity, your cats will avoid the tree like it was a foaming mad Rottweiler. Of course, you'll be stuck with a big ugly cardboard box in your living room all through the holidays, but it can always double as a buffet table.

Of course they slow with age and anything can happen. But so many times I have seen (and even experienced personally) how the enthusiasm for one specific cultivar can cause us to rationalize it's choice five ways from Sunday only to admit our errors ten years later. If there is only one lesson to be learned about gardening it would be to choose one specific cultivar for one specific area instead of falling in love with the idea of something and trying to talk ourselves into thinking it could work within our limitations. We somehow get attached to a convoluted vision of how we think a tree should behave and spend tons of energy convincing ourselves and everyone else how we will make it work, but often the trees have other ideas. That is such a prime focal point in your garden- you only have so many such spots and a light, delicate, airy small tree seems just the thing. I would only hope that you choose something that you can spend time sitting back and admiring in it's full glory rather than pruning and staking and attempting to bend it to your will for the rest of your life. Yes, you can "get all bonsai" on it and restrict it's growth my making pruning your primary hobby. But do realize that the growth restrictions achieved by bonsai techniques have as much, if not more, to do with root pruning as they do with trimming the canopy. Good luck. Please update us in 2026!

I would suggest groundcover. No idea where you are so don't know what grows/works in your area.