I was responding to "I was looking at putting a bigger plant/bush in the back and keep it about 3 ft tall" I think a three foot tall shrub back there would close in the porch. My instinct would be to carpet the area with low plants. Annuals, perennials, or subshrubs like cistus might work. Actually irises would work well, because they tend to spread so annoyingly that this confined area would be perfect for them. But be warned that most flowering plants have an all-too fleeting appeal and a very long off-season for something that you're going to look at every day close-up. It really depends on what you want this area to do for YOU. Then I would put some sort of a vignette on the porch - maybe a wicker chair and a big vase or planter, or a bench to put your bags down while you open the door... But I also think I would be tempted to put a small tree in this bed. It's a shame it's such a small bed, I'm not sure you can get far enough from the house, but something columnar or very upright might work and you can get a lot of kinds hat will grow well in full sun. A tree would eventually shade your entry a little, and you can get one that flowers if you want. You have a lot of room to put taller plants and/or flowers outside the curve of the sidewalk where they wouldn't render the porch claustrophobic, and also where the meatballs now are. KarinL

For the names of the maples you'd have to ask the nursery owner. But he may not know; so what you can also do is look at the growth habit of the tree and try to project out 20 years... and maples also lend themselves to pruning. If you want a high canopy, then all the branches you are looking at today will eventually be pruned off and a similar shape will be over your head. That is why to me the second maple/third picture looks more like what your property needs. But you could accommodate them both, or all three, if you manage them (once the other Bradford is gone, and honestly, it will likely be a lot cheaper to get rid of both at once - on the other hand, letting a new tree grow in for a few years first means you won't have to go through a moonscape phase). It actually looks like you might have a little new tree by the fence? Maples aren't always appreciative of being gardened under so if you want a flower bed I would be more inclined to remove your foundation hedge and corner pyramid evergreen, and make a nice garden there - those plantings weren't genius choices to start with and are getting past their best-before date. Removing that corner evergreen especially would open up your front door area nicely. Tree removal is always a good opportunity to rethink the whole property landscaping. If you do a plan view diagram and draw circles on it to represent the future canopies of your trees you may find it easier to think of options and placements. Consider sun direction and where you want shade. True you don't have a lot of room but there is scope for much better use of what you have. KarinL

calliope, I have a dozen dwarf mugo pines, and use this on the pine sawfly larvae: a 50-50 mix of isopropyl alcohol and water, with a bit of dishwashing detergent as a wetting agent. It kills them immediately. Maybe you'd find it less objectionable than the chemicals you're using. Last year they managed to eat fully half the needles on the northernmost of my mugos (which is consistently the favorite target), and this was the first spring I saw a few branches whose new needles didn't grow in. [And a heart-felt Thank you! to whichever old GWebber posted that formula 8 or 10 years ago. The same formula seems to work on mealy bugs.]

I really like the smaller pink blooming ones, I think they are Japanese magnolias and deciduous. When a late freeze doesn't get them, which it often does, they are really pretty especially as understory trees. That site Dawn provided has some nice smaller ones. However, unless you have a really really big yard that will give you the ability to view it properly, the huge evergreen ones look downright oppressive to me personally because they are often out of scale visually with the home and the branches are so low growing. They look especially bad planted too close to the house and I see that situation all the time. We had one next door when I was growing up and the magnolia pretty much dominated the whole front yard and the house too like a huge out of place giant dark "thing". They couldn't plant anything else by the house. The same is true for weeping willows. You need a big yard to get the visual effect and correct scale to avoid being visually overwhelmed.