if you are not ruling out azaleas entirely, the 'gumpo' azaleas in pink or white flowers are nice, compact, late-bloomers (june-july here). they rarely exceed 2' high x 3' wide, almost like a groundcover. groundcovers would look good as a border for that bed. sedums do well for me with a half day of sun. 'ogon' is one of my favorites (evergreen with bright yellow/gold foliage in spring) pairs well with 'blue spruce'. neither of these will exceed 4" in height.

Hi Carmody, I'm not sure where you are, except "Zone 7". If you live in the desert, *please* be careful in choosing ornamental grasses as they are incredibly invasive to the point of killing of many native species. I live in Tucson, AZ and there are millions of dollars spent yearly trying to keep various grasses from killing of native plants. It's terrible! I have some photos where various fountain grasses are smothering out *all* other plants, to the point of looking like some kind of weird fur! That said, there are really pretty grasses which *aren't* invasive. Here's a page about non-invasives where there are photos and a little info on some grasses you could try. http://aznps.org/invasives/GrowNative/main_pages/fountain_grass.htm There's one that we've been thinking about but haven't seen in person. It looks great in photos online though :) - Bull Grass - Muhlenbergia emersleyi "Grows as a clumping perennial grass up to 5 ft tall with light pink flowering plumes blooming in summer. Makes a nice accent in rocky areas or flat terrain." We've been looking for an ornamental grass (besides the low-growing Blue Gramma), and we might try it out, but I'm afraid our neighbors fountain grass that's invading our *entire* yard and might start growing in with it - then it would be really hard to remove... At any rate, if we do try it out I'll post about it here. Oh, if you want an informal looking hedge, Rosemary is nice. I'm not sure how quickly it will grow from a young plant but we have one here that's about 4' tall by 4' wide. It looked kind of like a fluffy bonsai when I trimmed it 2 years ago (it was about 5' - 5.5' across), but it's already poofing out to a nice, natural shape again. It's in partial sun, smells wonderful when bumped (it's along a little path), and in early spring it has lovely little blue flowers covering it. It doesn't need a lot of water. I deep water every week to every couple of weeks in summer depending on how hot it's been. If it's 115+ - it gets weekly watering. In winter it's been doing well with monthly deep watering, and to tell you the truth, sometimes just rainfall as it's not on our watering system and I've forgotten it a few times! Hope my rambling has been helpful. Good luck with your garden :) -A. http://aznps.org/invasives/GrowNative/main_pages/fountain_grass.htm http://aznps.org/invasives/GrowNative/invasives.html Here is a link that might be useful: Non-Invasive & Pretty - Ornamental Grasses

The photo in my post was taken in 2007 in Virginia. We had lots of deer there, so that's how I know that they ignore JM's. Currently, all the JM's in my yard in San Antonio are either in raised beds or containers using a combination of purchased top soil and potting soil mix. I left Crimson Queen behind, but did import three Red Emperor seedlings to Texas when we moved here last year. JM's are one of my attempts at zone denial and it seems to be working so far. Crimson Queen was replaced with the Tamekuyama which is apparently more suited to this climate. Your Shantung Maples are beautiful. I'll have to see if I miss fall color over time. I am originally from Houston, so Texas seasons (basically hot and not quite as hot) are not that new to me. btw - how does the grama grass look now? DH has reservations about the seed heads sticking up. Thinks he'll have to get the mower out more than once a year. We are about to go to stage 3 drought restrictions, lawn watering once every two weeks. Have a good weekend, Marble Falls area is nice.

We had no leaf spot or sunburn problems with 'Ballerina' in a northwest facing bed that gets full sun from about 10:00 am to 3:00 pm during the summer. Usually looked very nice, but were in a spot we started to limit to one deep supplemental watering a month. While they did survived on this through the dry heatwave of 2011, they suffered worse than most everything else in the bed, so were eventually replaced with autumn sage and flame acanthus. Would not have any reservations about using them around Dallas where they get at least a bit of late afternoon shade in the summer and weekly irrigation as needed. May also work well in other exposures, but this is all we are familiar with.