BUT, that is a Florida maple, so, it will most likely give you some decent fall color. Now, maybe a "Tupelo tree" MAY give you good fall color, BUT, I do NOT know that for sure. It is Nysa Sylvatica and is zones 4-9 as far as the "Hardiness zones". It will get a very bright RED color in fall wherever it will get good fall color.

There's lots of vines, I won't recommend the ones that actually grow on your house. But there are both evergreen and deciduous, some with flowers, some downright showy. My top 4 - Passiflora spp - they can get huge, but are fairly light weight. If you do those, you should probably get a few because the Gulf Frittilary butterfly uses them exclusively to lay their eggs on. The resulting caterpillars can denude the vine if there's too many. But it really is a magical sight to see all these butterflies on these really cool blooms - I never had a problem, only other people, lol. Bower vine - One of the few evergreen vines, needs pretty consistent moisture, pretty white blooms with pink throats. Antigonon leptopus - aka Queen's Wreath. Will definitely get cut back by cold weather, but comes roaring back in spring. Sprays of small rose colored blooms, heat and drought tolerant. Hardenbergia violacea Gorgeous purple sprays of flowers in spring, nice dark green, lance shaped leaves. Can take a fair amount of drought, needs support. Funny, we used to have a vine entry under the FAQs, but I don't see it now. Oh, and what you had in your first post (that I can remember, lol...) - Lysiloma - one of my favorite trees - soft and ferny. When the leaves drop they disappear really quickly because they're so small. I'd definitely put gravel under them, they do re-seed a lot and it makes them easier to yank or shovel prune. -Acacia smallii - Sweet acacia - the scent of their blooms in early spring always reminds me of candy. My only issue with them is in pedestrian areas, they can be thorny. AZTrees says they grow fast. Both they and the Lysiloma are quite drought and heat tolerant. Think parking lot, lol. You mentioned Tecoma - it sounds like some folks have had some bug issues with them, not sure if it's a big enough problem to avoid them all together, but I'd check it out first. Dondanea viscosa- Hop bushes are really neat plants, but I'm not sure they get tall enough for you. As to plants being poisonous... well, many of them are, especially in large doses. The nice thing about it is many of the poisonous plants - oleander, tomato plants and Brugmansia/Datura come to mind - also have leaves that smell pretty awful and don't typically attract browsing pedi-lets or animals. I think this is the longest post I've ever made! Whew!

Thanks for the additional photos and the bed measurements. I am fairly sure from looking at your photos that your house doesn't face due north, since in all your photos there is sun either on the front of the house (first photo, taken either early morning or late afternoon) or on the bed itself (last two photos, taken an hour or two before or after noon, based on the shadow from the house next door.) So you should probably go to Google Earth (which always has north up like a map) and find your house to figure out what direction it's really facing before we go any further on plants. It looks more like it gets close to a half day of sun and even when in shade, the shade will be bright, so you have more flexibility on what you can plant beyond shade plants. I'd still love a photo from across the street or plot plan that shows how deep the lot is and how wide, so I can figure out where to put a tree or two which are the only things large enough to ground your house and how to pull the landscape out some to also help ground the house. I would also love to be able to see both corners to see how to frame the front of the house, perhaps some flowering small trees or a taller spire of an evergreen. I still think that a more vase-shaped medium sized tree such as a Heritage birch would look great offset from the house, both over toward the right side and well out into the yard. Plant it so that the ultimate width won't overflow into the neighbor's yard. I am thinking generally that the front beds need to be made just a bit deeper and planted with two rows of shrubs and in front of that a row of perennials in just 2 or three colors with several plants per group for mass effect. One row of shrubs should be all one kind of evergreen that will stay below window height or shorter, one a long flowering shrub such as one of the reblooming Hydrangea macrophyllas such as your current Endless Summer (since it is doing well) or one of the longest blooming, and then a front row of perennials in just 2 or three colors. Depending on the evergreens and the flowering shrubs, you might have either closest to the house (though plant leave at least 2 feet with no plants behind the ultimate shrub size for maintenance and to prevent house damage.) On the walkway side, the perennials can be on the side away of the walk away from the house, continuing across the entire front in a straight line but filling in back to the shrubs on the right side of the house. This will give you something with enough mass to be visible against the house from the road (unlike the current one of this and one of that), and walking to the house will be through the garden rather than in front of the garden. Look at the first photo in thisthread from the blog of a wonderful landscape designer in the Detroit area, Deborah Silver, for something of the effect I am thinking of for your house's shrubs. She used H. paniculata Limelight, a taller hydrangea that is only just starting to bloom here, but you can choose one that will reach a height that come to just about your window sill level. The evergreens provide some color and structure for the five or so months that the Hydrangeas are bare, but don't need to be a formal sheared hedge as this yew hedge is. They can be a looser, naturally low growing evergreen. For your proportionately taller, narrower house (compared to the one in the blog), I would plant the trees off the corners, whether small flowering trees or taller narrow spires and a larger tree off to the side farther out into the yard toward the road as I mentioned above. You might even consider a medium hedge out closer to the road (though not close enough to be in conflict with winter snow plowing) to help bring higher the "ground feel" from the road (which looks like it must be lower than the house) to balance the house height. Something low maintenance with flowers such as some of the newer low care shrub roses or rugosa roses, or Hydrangea paniculata might work. For your current plants, move them to the back or side yard if you have a place for them, or advertise them as free if the taker digs them.

Wayne, I was in line going thru the Tim Horton's drive thru yesterday morning and I thought of you. I had said somewhere in this thread that I didn't think Thuja would withstand wind...boy was I WRONG! The Tim Hortons I was at is only 3-4 minutes from Lake Erie, and yesterday it was windy as hell outside. My poor Chevy Spark was shaking. lol Right after I ordered I looked over and noticed a row of Thuja that were planted to separate Tim Hortons from the next business. They were tall, they must've been 10ft tall or so, and except for the top foot of them that was swaying in the wind, the rest of the Thujas stood rock solid still. They didn't look unhappy at all! It changed my mind completely about Thujas, and they look really nice when they're tall like that. As for my Xmas neighbor, he's a contractor, except during the winter when he sells and delivers wood and his xmas trees, and plows. I wouldn't consider that "industrial". Maybe, I'm wrong. He recently purchased that small country store to service people out here on the lake. My only concern is his digging with his backhoe close to the property line and taking out any important tree roots. It's zoned agricultural out here so people can get away with most anything. I'm not going to get a lawyer and go against that neighbor. He knows everyone around here. Everyone. I will tell one tiny story about someone who went against him and leave it at that, though there are countless stories...When my nice neighbor moved in 13 years ago, a year after we did, he got into an argument with the xmas neighbor. Remember, their properties abut each other too. Right after that argument, like that afternoon or early the next day, an environmental inspector or county inspector, whatever you call them showed up at the nice neighbor's house and said he needed to look at my neighbor's septic system, he said there was a report called in that his septic was bad. Well, he had to have a brand new septic system put in, and it cost him thousands of dollars. Nice neighbor knew exactly who reported his septic. So, I am not getting a lawyer or stirring up a kind of hornets nest that would ruin my quality of life. No way.