Thanks Orchiddude! That palm is a solitaire palm. It's a great palm indoors and out! Tropicalbreezent got it right! Thanks Jim! Thanks jacklord. Im in SI, not as urban as most see NYC, but still not as much room as I would like to have! Thanks Bradleyo! Yeah, it gets to be a lot indoors, but luckily my family doesnt mind too much (well they mind, but they know how much it means to me!) and my dog is pretty good with not eating any plants (but she does love to get into the garbage). I will definitely post some indoor pics when the time comes! Thanks Island! Yup! I live in NYC! Some plants are in pots, some are in the ground. A few, like the palms in the ground, survive the winter with some protection (I just put some christmas lights and a garbage bin over them). Others like the elephant ears and bananas are easy to bring in and store for the winter. Some of the plants cant be dug up (like the coconut palm and tropical palms) so those are in pots and get put by a sunny window! The plumerias go dormant so they are pretty easy to keep indoors, but the large one might not fit indoors this year! The Passionvine, cannas, and ginger are hardy. The purple plants under the Elephant ears are called Purple Heart. They will be evergreen in your climate which is a huge plus! They look good up until temperatures get into the upper 20s, then they die back. They are hardy to zone 8 and up, but they come back for me since they are in a good microclimate. They are a little invasive, but easy to control and I think they are worth growing for sure! Thanks for looking everyone! -Alex

I hate nocking people and while I like the look of the non traditional pool there is a reason people choose low dropping leaves or larger leaves. Your list is horrible, nearly everything on there sheds so your looking for low maintance, good luck with that. LG magnolia is a pretty good choice, loropetalum look great but drop their small blooms and shed depending on variety, Knock out roses are nice but self deadhead, wouldn't put them close to the pool or a breeze would have your pool littered, I am totally with fairview. Its not only about taste its about how much work your going to be doing down the road. If you like the look of traditional check out japanese pools and some of the Japanese maples that drop all their leaves at the same time of the year "making cleanup easier". Jolie, just look around at what is working in the area and talk to a good garden center. Palms seem to do well in many parts of AZ, near phoenix and personally I would go with a purple bougainvillaea or three.

As Yardvaark commented on the other thread in the landscape design forum, a foot of growing width isn't enough for much of anything; only small perennials will work and they won't soften the look of the pool much, or perhaps annual vines such as black-eyed Susan vine/Thunbergia or one of the shorter vining beans on a wire mesh fence that is only 3' high. If you want to use shrubs, I would add two feet of bed so that you have a total of three feet at the very least, with 3-4 added feet being better. Without that, no shrubs are realistic for that spot. My suggestions below will only work if you make the bed deeper than it currently is. You want to choose plants that are shorter than or only very slightly taller than the height of the pool sides to minimize the amount of debris (old flowers, dropped leaves, etc.) that falls into the pool. "Obviously winter [interest] will be lacking, since we're in Central, NJ" If this is an area where you are viewing it in the winter (such as out windows) you may want to include evergreens, whether broad-leafed plants such as rhododendrons, or smaller conifers such as Chamaecyparis/false cypress or one of the lower-growing (but not groundcover) junipers. You could also add some of the smaller red-twigged dogwoods, which will be green in summer, will may have nice fall foliage if you choose one which is known for nice fall color, and will have red winter twigs. If you don't care about the winter view, you could add: shorter forsythia - be sure to check height on a site such as a botanic garden, not just the plant tag shorter spirea - also be sure to check height as they vary from 1 1/2' to over 6'. Some have gold foliage. Bobo Hydrangea paniculata - blooms July, August, and into September. Blue mist shrub/Caryopteris clandonensis have lovely blue flowers in September, and during the rest of the growing season the foliage is either gold or a bluish-grayish green, depending on the variety.

For screening, N willow bush seems not tall, so it and arborvitae aren't remotely close in nature. I'd be reluctant to try something you previously lost, unless conditions will change. You have to determine the cause of problem first. Can it be corrected, or do you need to adapt the plants to it ...? Learn if the soil leans acid, alkaline, or neutral. On an unrelated subject, do you recall we once discussed increasing the number of trunks on a tree, I think in relation to some redbuds you had? As an example, I then posted a picture of a crape myrtle that I flat cut to the ground for the purpose of increasing trunks (it was stubs in the dirt), with the objective in my case of going to the max in number of trunks. (I think you were after a half-dozen or so main trunks.) When I cut the crape it had about 15 trunks. It came back with about 45. Since then, I've never cut any that developed as the tree enlarged. A few more came from the base, but mostly they branch as they grow taller and I've kept them all. There must be 125 (just guessing) at the top now. It reached about 11' height at end of last year. I will cut to 10' which is where the permanent canopy will begin. There is still lots of canopy below that now, but it is being contained mainly within the trunk profile. As the canopy grows ever larger, above 10', what remains below will gradually be removed until it is nothing but bare trunks. (This tree is at my mom's place in a snowbird mobile home park.) At some point, where trunks abut one another, they will fuse into a single, solid mass, which I look forward to seeing. Hope I am not Corona'd away before then. I'll add another picture after it leaves out, which has recently just started. (To now, though it has canopy, it has no permanent head yet. It will be on top of what you see.)