• Indigo bush
• Sea daisy
• Mexican olive
• Purple sage
• Rock rose
• Lemon sumac
• Autumn sage

Desert willow, arroyo sweet wood., tenaza tree, Salvia leucantha, Bird of paradise, Pride of barbados.

I agree with the use of shorter plants, especially where the sidewalk turns. You need to be able to look out the front door and see what is going on outside sometimes.

Japanese plum yew.

Get rid of the invasive Nandinas and add in:

Texas sage

Black chokeberries

Texas persimmon, Goldenball leadtree, Pineapple guava and/or Desert willow `Lucretia Hamilton`

Irises

I like the dwarf nandinas there. I echo what others have said. I think that a low perennial ground-cover would look nice there and allow the other showy plants to draw your eye across.

I'm into palms. I think a specimen quality multi trunk

Definitely would be a pricey but beautiful option that would probably be unique to your neighborhood.

My husband would be so pleased with the palm. Not my thing although very beautiful.

Cosmo, I'm intriqued with the idea of a SILVER Mediterranean Fan Palm. I have several green ones and love them. haven't searched, but have not noticed the silver ones in nurseries. But found some on ebay.

The silver saw palmetto is typically more available and nearly indistinguishable from the Med and might be slightly more cold hardy. There is a nursery in FW that has a 30gallon silver palmetto for $150.00. Great price but digging a hole for any 30 gallon plant is a heart attack served on an ash handle. I settled for 2 15s for $100 each from another nursery.

A needle palm would be bullet proof but anymore is almost impossible to find in trade from nursery grown stock. Also they are shrub palms. Needles are more or less protected since most in the trade were wild dug and containerized and the habitat was being destroyed.

I was lucky to discover a local Lowes had scads of needles one year in late fall and had them DEEPLY discounted. I grabbed them all up.

I'm going to chime in with a bit of a jerk comment (albeit a well-informed jerk comment)

Please get rid of the Nandina bamboo. My absolute least favorite plant. I grew up in construction, and currently work part time lanscaping/part time remodelling houses, and whenever I see Nandina in a yard I know that I have a -hell- of a job cut out for me.

You'll never be able to get rid of it once it's established, and personally, I don't like the way they look. Maybe how much I hate the plant has tainted my vision, but I really dislike the way they look.

Now enough of the jerk comments, time for the fun stuff. I'm going to go ahead and echo what others have said here, a needle palm would look great there. Honestly any kind of cold-tolerant cycad would be great there, as needle palm sure aren't the most exotic. They're simply the most available.

Personally though, I have 10 gallon needle palms in my yard (pretty slow growers, and mine haven't been in the ground for a year yet, so they're still about the same size). They didn't mind the snow and ice, they didn't mind the recent flooding, they're awesome plants.

Fair warning: make sure to inspect any palms you buy before bringing them home. Some have some nasty infestations on them.

You might consider planting a pear tree (Bradford?) or a single understory tree on the curve. You can have 4 season interest, a larger foreground object to compete with the house and to direct the eye to discover as you walk. A muss from symmetry ...

Just my thought when I saw you photo. Good luck!

Well, if you're going to go for a palm, get for a hardy Pindo Jelly Palm with scrumptious, edible fruits!

And Hellz to the NO on short-fused timeb0mb Bradford pears!