Kwanzan Cherry - short lived and frequently afflicted by a number of pests and diseases (aphids, bacterial canker, black knot, borers, crown gall, leaf spot, powdery mildew, twig cankers, viruses). This is one of the few trees that I've seen that frequently caries a warning about potential pest and disease issues by most nurseries trying to sell it. Kwanzans are just plain finicky, IMO. _____________________________________________________ Dogwood - if there aren't a lot of these around where you live, give it a try. From a Cornell publication: "To avoid or lower the risk of dealing with (dogwood anthracnose), consider using resistant (cultivars). The white flowering Kousa Dogwoods, Cornus kousa have shown good resistance and require less input to maintain a healthy tree. A number of crosses between C. kousa and C. florida have been made in attempts to produce the flowering characteristics of the Flowering Dogwood with the resistance of the Kousa Dogwood. These cultivars are available on the market and are known as the 'Stellar' Hybrid series, 'Aurora', 'Celestial', 'Constellation', Ruth Ellen', 'Stardust', and 'Stellar Pink'. A resistant Flowering Dogwood cultivar named 'Appalachian Spring' has also been developed from a living tree in an otherwise devastated Maryland forest and (is fairly widely) available." 'Appalachian Spring' has received a LOT of good press recently and is in high demand. _____________________________________________________ Crabapple - I'd definitely considering using a few of these. Be sure to find one that is resistant to the four major crabapple disease. Here's a list of some cultivars (and species) that are pretty disease resistant. The ones with *** are also frequently ranked very high for aesthetics. I have not narrowed down the list for size or appropriateness for our area, but this list should give you a good start. 'Adirondack' 'Bob White' 'Camzam' (Camelot) 'Centennial' 'Christmas Holly' 'Donald Wyman' *** baccata 'Jackii' *** 'Ludwick' 'Mary Potter' *** 'Molten Lava' *** 'Ormiston Roy' 'Prairifire' *** 'Professor Sprenger' sargentii *** 'Sentinel' *** 'Silver Moon' 'Sinai Fire' 'Strawberry Parfait' *** 'Sugar Tyme' 'Tina' 'White Cascade' *** If you have junipers (especially Eastern Red-cedars) near the planting location, you may want to be sure to choose a variety with EXCELLENT cedar apple rust resistance. Here is a link that might be useful: Cornell Article on Dogwood Anthracnose

Those pictures were taken at 6pm and the area was just getting overtaken by shade from the pines in the west. I will watch this weekend, but I believe it has sun from ~11am to ~6pm. I am hoping I can get by with some sun loving shrubs, because I like both Forsythia and smoke tree as options. Some of the options I have been looking at: Forsythia (sun) Red twig Dogwood (partial sun) Smoke tree (sun) Lilac (sun) Althea (partial) Amelanchier (partial) Oriental spruce (sun) Compressa Juniper (sun) I saw a golden hinoki cypress that I loved, but I think deer will devour it. Any big reasons to avoid something on the list above?

I realize that is not the correct cultivar for that spot, but it was planted by the builder in 1962. It is too beautiful to remove, if you had only seen it before it had been butchered. I love this tree so much I had the police out here! They didn't dare touch my cornus florida which is about 3 inches from the power lines. I would like to have a 'natchez' there but I just can bring myself to get rid of this one. That tree has gotten me awards (yard of the month) in the past years. Now, it looks like a piece of crap from the road. Crepe myrtles are very sturdy, I have never seen one fall. It has survived some really bad ice storms that caused some other trees in the area to split in pieces. This crepe myrtle will never have it's beautiful widespread canopy again thanks to those unsympathetic jackasses.

hmm ok good, I was thinking ~4 ft starter trees would be at least $100 each. I will check local and online in a few weeks when Spring comes. Even if propigating is as simple as cut>hormone>plant>water, I prefer not to water daily especially in Spring to Summer instead of Fall when it's less likely to dry out and fail. So that alone is worth the cost of starter trees. I will need to water the starters on a timer but they should be a bit more forgiving than keeping propigated branches moist, in full sun. Starting from seed, is also basically a %100 no now, but for the columnars which won't be sidewalk or Full sun, maybe maybe I'll consider seed for those two if it's something sort of exotic or whatever, but I should be able to find pretty easily what I want as a starter tree. I've never seen shrubs near the sidewalk in my life, I'm talking about the strip of grass between the sidewalk and street, EDIT Actually I have seen shrubs and it was part of a very nice total install, in this same town, but is very rare. some of the OK'd trees for under powerlines are : cornelian cherry flowering cherry higan cherry service berry amur maple crepe myrtle english hawthorne winter king hawthorne dogwood crabapple paper bark maple japanese maple star/sweetbay magnolia etc I do want fragrant flowering or fruiting, and last time I looked into this was leaning towards Magnolia for scent, but am also planting korean spice viburnum for fragrance, so maybe get something like a serviceberry for street (something birds/squirrels/rabbits can enjoy without toxins which I have to look into). thank you