Gardengal48 first, the original question asked about moving to an area for gardening, so that is what I answered. Obviously most people cannot move only for best gardening. Second, I could not disagree with you more. Pollinators are one aspect of a very complex system of specific interactions that have evolved together so that every aspect fulfills a specialized niche in the ecosystem. I have a Master’s in both Wildlife Biology and Environmental Education. Did you know that songbirds gain their coloring for specific proteins found in their food sources? Each different protein will create a specific color. During migration and mating season, these proteins are by far the most important food source for each species of bird since a female will choose a male to mate with based first on his color brightness. The highest concentration of the proteins are found in many different species of moth caterpillars. Each caterpillar has a specific host species or genus that it eats, and nothing else. As the native moth caterpillars, that the native birds seek out, only eat native plant species, then without those plants both animal species are out of luck. There are thousands upon thousands of other examples like this, so just because pollinators drink nectar or collect pollen from non native plants that is where it stops. Not to mention many non native species that are used by gardeners end up escaping cultivation and become nasty problems in the surrounding wild areas. In my area, NW Ohio, 3 species that escaped cultivation have devastated many of the last remaining swamps of the Lake Erie Basin - Purple Loosestrife, Phrafmites Reed Grasses, and Asian Honeysuckle bushes and vines (multiple varieties). This has effected the water table, fish species, bird species, soil composition, etc. Every plant we plant as humans has an impact on every species since plants are the base of the food web, so what we chose can either be extremely beneficial, neutral, damaging, or extremely negatively altering. Being educated about each choice and their impacts is very important and can hopefully help save species that are currently on the brink and stop any more from becoming that way.

That would depend on a place where you are planning to put your container(s). Enziandom is a show-off hydrangea and deserves a such spot where it always be a conversational piece. In ground it grow rather wider than tall, but in container may behave differently. BTW, it has a lacecap sister-version, Nachtigale (Nightingale). All Domotoi I ever saw was very pale washed denim blue. Not a my cup of tea, but again, all depend of where you want to place it. Claudie is a very interesting hydrangea, but beside the bloom time it has nothing interesting to show after. The same apply to the Blue Bird, though since it is a serrata and seems to be most hardy of all common varieties, you may even could try it in a ground, not a container. I would, especialy for 9.99 :-) TD has those transitional color change phases as you know that could be worth to offset additional troubles you'll have by growing it in a container. I'd expect it to stay in 3x3' range (4x4' in a ground). One more thing to consider, color. In container you could easily keep soil either alcaline or acidic thus have any color you wish to, so chose the cultivar(s) of the appropriate 'natural' color you want to see. For the best red I'd chose Red Cardinal, for the best blue- Enziandom.

30 years old PG could attain enormous proportions, something like this (20'x 20') but could be kept at any desired size as it's prunable. Lately I had a chance to inspect (closely) several of 10-15'+ PGs growing at old cemetery and all of them had one thing in common: thick scraggy unbranched trunk to 4-5' and then thinner, but still not productive branches that start producing live shoots only at 6-7' height off the ground. Due to droopy nature of PG, everything above 3-4' was green and flowering (from the distance), but I'm affraid that in a winter and spring it will be not a sight to admire. So, my point is, that since you'll be looking at your tree not from a long distance, but rather closely, you might be better off to grow it as a shrub rather than a tree. Just in case you'd like to see a 'Kuyshu', here it is trained to a tree. It's about 5-6 years old (2 years in my garden and another 3-4 years were trained to tree form by grower) and about 7' tall. As you could see it's much more upright than PG. I think most of 'full size' paniculatas could reach your desired size, but when choosing among them I'd avoid Tardiva as it is a latest to leaf out and bloom of all of them and in your zone you'll not see flowers probably till end of August, while Kuyshu start blooming in late July.

'Carol Mackie' is officially going on my list. :-) We love fragrant plants, its the first thing I look for. I can never have enough of them. I love mums. I usually only cut back once and they stay at a pretty good height. I find if I cut them too late, they don't bloom early enough to enjoy them. They are very long lived in my garden. Regardless of weather over the winter, they usually have new basal foliage going into the winter. I usually leave the dead foliage until spring, just to give them more protection. Seems a pretty low effort way of helping them get thru the winter. I really enjoyed mine this fall. And I had a white one in the back that was just doing very little in not enough sun, so I divided it into three and added those to the full sun bed out front. I wasn't sure I would enjoy white with the other more muted fall color mums, but I seem to have managed to get them in lucky positions where they really shined. Not by plan. [g] They were small this season but next year, they should be much bigger. Like everything else in that bed. [g] Wow that's a lot of blooms on Endless Summer. I have never had that many on mine. I will try your suggestion for pruning in the spring. I think I may have been doing that any way. I get a lot of die back for some reason and I cut back to buds that appear alive. What direction are your neighbor's ES facing? Sun/shade? I wonder if it could be that, or like everything else, it might just be all the Maple tree roots sucking all the moisture out of the ground around my property.