Hey all, I am taking this all in and organizing my list of trees to look into. Thank you! "But remember...for a harmonious landscape composition, some repetition is a good thing. Otherwise, what you end up with is less a landscape and more a plant collection. " Thanks, wisconsitom, that is precisely what I needed to hear. I'm not going for an ordered or symmetrical look per se, but I DO want a direction, intention and theme. I like so many type of landscapes, though! And I can't wait until I got it all figured out to start planting, otherwise it will never happen. Also I need to pace my yard expenditures. I know nothing about garden or landscape design, but I am a plant person and have been gardening since I was a child, have worked on farms and as a gardener and done botanical internships, ect... Enough to know I don't know much ;) My husband is pretty good with edibles, like grapes. My level of involvement is moderate now with a 1 year old in tow, but I would like it to be high. I like to spend at least 30-60 mins a day, all year, tending to plants, and much more when needed. gardengal48 yes, I have gone through the assessment process with the city, and their selection of fruit trees is limited. They've come and marked where our trees can be. At the end of September a group called Friends of Trees will reveal their available trees (which homeowners help plant). But If I want something different I must go get it myself and apply for the permit. A neighbor down the street works for the urban forestry center, she said she'd fill me in and help me pick out so W trees. So nice! About crepe myrtles, I see them all over Portland, blooming right now, often next to a house so their flowers peak in the windows, or even second story windows. They do seem to thrive in sun or protected courtyards.

There are other species that grow wild in the province, mostly, I suspect, up in the mountains. In our hills, patched with woods, fields, hedges, and areas in transition, the ones I see are dog roses (R. canina, but there may be other closely related species, too: I see a fair amount of variation in the population), R. gallica, and, occasionally, R. arvensis. The dog roses make big shrubs and are a common colonizer of abandoned fields, also growing in hedges and along woodland edges. They're usually shrubby but will scramble up trees if necessary to reach the sun: a couple of times I've seen dog roses twenty feet up oaks. Some are rather pretty, but all in all they're not roses you long to take home and put in the garden. The relationship to the Albas, in growth, habit, and flower color, is obvious. R. gallica is short, usually not more than a foot high, suckering, mostly growing along the side of the road in wooded areas, on woodland edges and along ditches. It has relatively large flowers, pale to bright pink with a white eye, charming. Round black hips. (Dog rose hips are oval and bright lacquered scarlet). I've tried a couple of times to collect and grow suckers of this, but without any luck; the soils in which it grows are generally rocky or compacted. When I did get a couple of suckers they didn't take. Rose arvensis looks a lot like a dog rose, but it blooms a little later and has the fused styles of Synstilae. This is the least common of the three, but I see it occasionally. Not surprisingly, the once-blooming old roses and ramblers bred from these species are the best, easiest to grow roses in my garden.

Ligustrum japonicum 'Texanum' is a lower and slower growing cultivar, often chosen because they don't get as tall as the species. It is more for locations where owners do not want it to exceed 7-8'. Yes some will get a bit taller with time. You are asking specific size and growing questions, but don't seem to understand that there is a variety of growth conditions that are impossible to calculate. Even individual plants, growing side-by-side with the same growing conditions, can grow at different rates. Besides the water, soil, nutrients, individual plant vigor, pruning, root systems etc. over time, no less, we don't have any way to know the quality of the nursery stock you ultimately will purchase. We can give you general guidelines, but not exact growing rates for hypothetical plants and conditions for their lifespan. No one can.

The PNW basically has two distinct seasons: cold & wet from mid-October to late-May, and hot & dry the other half of the year. I think the reason the trees grow so big is due primarily to the Spring, and a short interval in the late Fall when there is constant drizzle and overcast skies, and a few rare days when the sun comes out and it warms up. This is actually great weather for the trees to grow. I think the main thing is the constantly cool temperatures mean evaporation is very low and plants don't require as much water to grow. It is true that during this same time temperatures are too cold for many ordinary garden plants to grow, but the native plants are well adapted to a bit colder temperatures and take advantage of the few rare days during this time when it does warm up for a little while. With the ground completely saturated with water from all the previous cold drizzle, a single warm day during this time the plant will put on a lot of growth. The Summers can be hot, and are dry. That's why all the trees are conifers. Needle leaves mean air can pass through them and cool down the leaves to prevent excessive evaporation and water loss. Otherwise dark leaves would warm up under the sun to a temperature above the surrounding air (and there is some marine influence from the cool ocean so the air helps cool things down a little bit, especially at night). Another reason for evergreen leaves is that the leaves don't have to regrow after the Winter, and can take advantage of unusual sunny warm days early on in the year, since that's when all the water falls. If you look at the deciduous trees here, temperatures don't rise long enough for them to regrow until about late April or May. (And the Big Leaf Maples generally grow close to water in places where the soil stays wet even throughout the summer) Winters surprisingly don't get that cold, but it's a long extended period of cold, constantly hovering just above freezing. The winds coming in from the ocean, while cold, are still warmer than the land and keep things from going below freezing. The cool ocean waters also mean calm winds and mostly no storms that would bring in arctic cold. Ironically it's the warm waters on the East coast that lead to the freezing storms. I'm farther North in latitude than New York but am experimenting growing certain varieties of citrus outside. (Well, actually I'm just a tiny bit further North than Quebec City, Canada or Duluth, Minnesota, if you can believe that) A few people in my neigborhood have ornamental banana plants in their yards, and I have read of some adventurous gardeners around here growing treeferns by tieing and bagging up their fronds for the Winter. thread with pictures here: [https://www.houzz.com/discussions/banana-in-the-snow-dsvw-vd~4956439[(https://www.houzz.com/discussions/banana-in-the-snow-dsvw-vd~4956439)