You might consider 'Caldwell Pink,' also on the Earthkind list. That was the most disease resistant rose I ever grew. I don't remember it ever having a leaf or two drop from Blackspot at any given time. It's only drawback is that is has NO scent whatsoever. Unfortunately, that's a big one for me, but you don't mention scent as one of your criteria. Seriously, though, if anyone would be interested in starting a rose breeding program for areas with high humidity, 'Caldwell Pink' would be a good place to start.

I am relatively sure that you have two spirea (the lime colored ones) and two potentilla. It is a vining clematis on the very end and will need a trellis. The easiest thing to do is go to a nursery or big box store and look at the metal trellises they have since clematis can't wrap around the larger diameter of a wood trellis unless you cover them with wire. Something like what cearbhaill used for the mandevilla vines would be fine, but might need to be bigger if the clematis is one of the larger ones. (and despite the often repeated idea that clems like shaded roots, they don't need shade on their roots, just adequate moisture and some mulch to keep the moisture even. They prefer not to have root competition, so I'd keep groundcovers away from them. Spirea take well to hard pruning. I have two that are close enough to the house that they often get squashed during the winter by globs of snow falling from the eaves. I prune them down to a few inches and within a week they are putting out new growth that looks clean and symmetrical. I don't have potentilla, so I can't help with advice on those. Good choice to remove the spruce that was too close to the house. I'd put in a perennial or two there. In the area of the electric meter, you want to leave the meter reader room to see the meter. I might well plant a large pot and place it there, rather like cearbhaill did along the wall behind the pool with some bushy and draping plants in it. You could also add a trellis near the front corner to let your vine (honeysuckle?) grow around the corner. I'd probably plant a groundcover as well to help fill in some of the area between the shrubs. I can see something low with yellow flowers in your photo, but don't know if that was planted there on purpose. As at least one other person mentioned, you may at some point want to take up the sidewalk and move it farther from the house so that you have a more reasonably sized planting bed. Five feet is wide enough so that plants won't encroach on the walkway and will leave you room to paint behind them, but I like beds wider than that so I can plant several layers of plants and have something of interest going on most of the year. Alternatively, you add a wide bed on the far side of the walkway so that the walk goes through a garden rather than defining your garden bed.

Don't give up! I can tell you our 4 Sambucus shrubs really took off this year after being planted 3 years ago. They are finally stunning and thriving! We were really considering giving up on them if they looked as ratty at the end of this season as they did for the last couple. I'm really stunned and wish I had a before/after pic because it really is something. By the way... No fertilizer - no nothing other than it's "natural" environment and some minimal pruning/shaping.

My favorite shrubs for hedges are the hollies. There are many of them available and some get quite tall while others remain more compact. Their tiny flowers (so small you hardly notice them) are amazingly fragrant, and the birds love the berries, although they generally don't eat the berries until later in winter. Hollies are amazingly heat-tolerant, drought-tolerant and wind-tolerant once established. Dwarf Burford holly makes a really nice privacy screen along a fence line with the proper spacing, particularly if you let them reach their natural pyramidal shape and don't prune them. The use of the word "dwarf" is deceptive because they are dwarf only in comparison to regular Burford holly which is a huge monster. The dwarf Burford hollies we planted about 10 years ago are about 10 feet tall and each plant's spread covers 6' to 8' feet in width. We spaced them pretty far apart so they could reach their mature size without crowding one another. Another lovely shrub that is underused is Abelia. These are semi-evergreen, small-leaved shrubs that flower in spring. Their growth is quite dense and they are very drought-tolerant once established. I have a chaste tree in the backyard butterfly garden and the wildlife love it, and so do I, but it is deciduous and won't provide much privacy in winter. I've linked the website of Sooner Plant Farm for you because their website is amazingly informative. It has detailed into on many of the types of plants mentioned here, and photos for many of them, as well as many, many others. After you spend a little while looking at all the plants on their website, you'll have all kinds of ideas about what you could plant for a privacy screen. I second the idea that a mixed hedgerow is healthier because one disease can wipe out a monoculture of one plant variety. Also, diversity attracts more wildlife like birds and butterflies, for example. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Sooner Plant Farm