The things I've read lately say not to cut plants back any more than you have to when you move them. The roots need food from the leaves in order to recover. If you haven't dug up the azaleas yet, can you wait to do it after they go dormant for the winter? Cutting them back now may encourage new growth that won't harden off before winter hits. It will also cut off buds for next spring's blooms. As for the oleander, they don't survive in our area farther north, but I'd think that moving them to the south side of the house, preferably near a wall or the house that will soak up heat during the day to radiate to the plants at night would help. Good luck with all your transplanting. I'm going to be doing a lot of that once things go dormant.

You are limiting yourself unnecessarily if you are looking only for natives that are both narrow and evergreen. About the only one I can think of is a selection of any one of a number of cultivars of American arborvitae, Thuja occidentalis. And these not all that happy in so much shade. Other possibility might be a Rhododendron, but a more suitable choice would be one of the hybrids rather than a native species. Is there an overriding need to stick solely to natives? A great many non-native plants are extremely well suited to gardens without upsetting the ecological balance :-)) And if one really wants to stick to pure natives, then they should be limited to plants that only grow naturally in one's immediate area - an even more limited selection.

Bill its nearly 10.30 pm now and raining so I will measure it tomorrow at a rough guess a flower would be about 1.5 to 2 cms wide. I had a look at my paper book I write all the plants in what day I planted then and height and width from the label 4-6 mts High and 2-4 mts wide.. I planted it in March 2005 Bill and what I do to keep it at a nice size is prune it after flowering which I usually do in December that results in a lovely low thick bushy shrub. Now the Lemon Myrtle which I forgot to prune last year as it flowers later and with Christmas and all, has grown so much this past year as it has been sitting in all that excess water from the tank overflow pipe that would be 3 mts tall now, I don't mind that being tall as its next to the Hymenosporum flavum common name Native Frangipani which is almost finished flowering, that one gets a big cut down every year with a saw Tony does that for me now as its a ladder job and I don't have the strength he hacks it something shocking which upsets me and its comes back every year.. Hymenosporum flavum

Not without a photo, georginagale. Did you try to include one?