To xoxosmom Well, I haven't decided on Ficus Nitida yet and I believe I will find some other alternatives. I guess, it's ok to have 1-2 trees, but to have a whole row of Ficus Nitida as a fence is too much for our area. Don't get me wrong, I love how it looks and if not for its thirst for water and gigantic size in 5 years, I would love to have it as my privacy fence. Btw lack of space is not a problem, (it is difficult to say looking at the photos provided, but we do have a pretty long backyard). Regarding our neighbours... On the sides of our house we have only one neighboring house, and they're not concerned or worried too much about what we feel/think, so I won't even ask them if it's ok to plant tree A or B. Also, people who put children's playground at the corner of their huge backyard obviously didn't care much what their neighbours would think. Besides, we have only 1 bordering corner with them - that's it. I believe it would be only fair for us to block that playground in the future, which at the end will provide shade for their kids - win-win for both. I do care what our neighbors in front of our backyard would think, they are lovely people, but so far I'm not planting anything big on that side of the fence. If I decide to plant some big trees there in the future, I will contact them to see if they mind. To marcinde I already checked Summer Winds Nursery, which has a great return policy, but their trees are very small and selection is not that great. Also, I was at Treeland Nurseries, which has a huge selection of local trees of different sizes, but their return policy is 6 months and only 1/2 of the price, considering you bring a dead tree back. If I pay for transporting a dead tree, then transporting a new one back, at the end I will be lucky to get 25%-30% of my initial investment. I figured out only 1 thing after visiting these nurseries - I have to do my research online and come there only when I decide on what I want as people working at the nurseries just want to sell stuff, they don't care much if it will be too big/too small or will take 7 years to grow when I ask for a fast growing trees/shrubs. Also, all 3 nurseries push for Ficus Nitida - their #1 choice. Thank you, I will check Desert Botanical Gardens' seminars and see if they can give me a good advice on where to shop for plants in the valley.

HU-64...24, I'm a firm believer in going with the local trends. Zoysia is not a popular choice in PHO for whatever reasons. You can give it a try. There are varieties of all the ones you mention, and they do not all have the same characteristics, so look for zoysia installations and see what you think. In most large cities you can find various grass types in use at places like museums, zoos, and botanical gardens. I am reasonably certain that ASU uses only seeded bermuda, so I can save you the time of looking there. Their stadium grounds are separate from the general university and uses only hybrid bermuda. You can check local nurseries to see if any of them sell zoysia, and ask to see some installations. Check nurseries in/near Scottsdale, because zoysia can be expensive to maintain.

Since you are obviously a reader, I'll give you some more wordy info (that I doubt anyone else will read). The ingredients for Al's Gritty Mix can be a bit of work to find for some people. Others, can get it rather quickly. Which to use: 1) the gritty, 2) the 5-1-1 or 3) Millet's CHC mix depends on your preferences, objectives, $$, and how much effort you are willing to expend up-front vs. down-the-road. The gritty mix can be watered and watered and watered -- without much issue for killing the tree. In your area, during summer, you'd probably need to water every other day for the gritty mix. Even when it was 110F here in Fresno, I never had to water "several times per day" which the opponents of the mix will try to warn you. In fact, I think every 1.5 days were working for me; basically, not even every day. The CHC mix can be watered quite a bit as well without concern. But probably wont' need to be watered more than every other day or third. How often one needs to water a container citrus depends on the mix you choose, but equally depends on the size of soil (medium/container) balanced by with the root and canopy sizes. If you put a small tree in a large pot, you don't need to water as often and vice versa. Don't use a bagged mix off-the-shelf unless you add at least 50% small sized (thumbnail) bark chips. Then add a little Perlite to it, also. Doing this is at the door-step to finishing the 5-1-1 mix, so you could just follow those directions. The 5-1-1 mix for Citrus is basically 5 parts dust-screened small bark, 1 part Acid-lovers bagged mix (or plain peat) and 1 part dust-screened Perlite. Then add calcium (either a small amount of Dolomite (lime) or a larger amount of gypsum) -- which to use you should probably ask Al. He'll probably say the Dolomite. The gritty and CHC last a very long time without replacement (like 5 years? not sure). The 511 is 2 years, I believe. All 3 have their pros-cons and can work in our climates. I personally have the majority of mine in the Gritty, a few in the other two, and a few in bagged mixes. I have the most trouble with bagged mixes, but they were the cheapest and least work -- up front, that is. They need to be replaced more often. Bagged mixes are far from ideal for container citrus. However, once you figure out how to compensate for them (some people never do), it is fine.... not ideal, but fine. Attempting "ideal" is worth it to many folks and their trees, thus the proliferation of Gritty mix users in the Container forum and the praise for Al/Tapla. When do you stop up-sizing containers? In general, the answer is: when your tree reaches the maximum size you'd like and is healthy; stick with that final container size. This assumes continuous upgrades of container size (like 4" every pot-up). Example, starting at a 12" width, next container is 16", then 20", and 24" (probably your final one 5+ years from now). If you use the 5-1-1 or the CHC mix you should follow this procedure. However if you choose gritty mix, you could buy the 24" container, or half wine-barrel or plastic rope-handle tub (15-19gal), and fill it up and put a small tree in there and never have to up-size again. That would be the final container used until the tree is fully mature. Someday, you will need to replace the gritty mix itself as the bark component will have decomposed completely. But the gritty mix is expensive to fill such a huge container when you only need like 1/4th that amount for the first couple years. I have done it though, putting a young tree in the plastic 19gallon rope-handle tubs. It functions extremely well, except in landscape appeal. With a strong prompting from my wife, I ended up putting the tree in the ugly blue $5 plastic tub inside a nice wooden container (to keep the roots cool anyway). The reason I love the last approach is b/c when I bare-root the Citrus for the gritty mix, it sets the tree back several months, sometimes an entire growing season. The ones I've put in the largest tubs don't need to be disturbed for a long time and only by the 2nd season are leaving the others way behind. Good luck, Chris

Ignore my seed suggestions and listen to TW. The 700 sqft lawn has too much shade for bermuda. You might send a soil test to Logan Labs and post it back here to see what morph has to say about the soil chemistry. TW's comment on salt has me concerned. I've seen St Aug growing from the sand dunes out into the sea, so I'm not too concerned about that, but I'm wondering what salt there is in PHO. You would be better off waiting for the old grass to revive than to seed with new. Established roots work better and faster than new roots. As I usually mention to people who are impatient with their bermuda coming out of dormancy...give it time and you'll be laughing that you ever suspected there was a problem. Now with the shade, you do have a problem. Your steps need comment: Kill everything with roundup. This is fine. Wait 2 weeks, then mow to lowest setting. Oops! Don't wait 2 weeks. Water the area daily to try and sprout all the weed seeds you can. Then spray with RU again a week later. Rake up all the debris. This is good Aerate the soil with rental from homedepot. No need for this step. If you have hard soil, then use shampoo on it. Spread the bermda seed, and add top soil. YIKES! No. Scatter the seed and roll it down with a rented water fillable roller. For really small areas, just walk on all the seed to ensure good seed-to-soil contact. Don't add topsoil unless you are trying to raise a low spot on the yard. Adding topsoil WILL change your drainage. There's another recent post on this forum where the guy has a broken house from water backing up into his garage and then freezing between the bricks. His pictures indicate too much top dressing caused the water to not drain into the yard but instead back up to the buildings.