With respect to the front bed, I'm on side with removing the tree. The trunks really only look good from one angle, and from the other angles it's not a real beauty. And when it comes to suckers, I have very low tolerance! But what really bugs me in that bed is the shrubs, and I would totally rip them out as well and use that space to create a lower profile flowering garden. My urge is to open the space visually. If you want a tree, I don't see that it has to be in the bed; it could be closer to the front of the property. With the long narrow bed, if liriope will make you smile, you're a pretty happy person :-) it takes more to get a smile out of me, I'm afraid! But in these long narrow beds against a wall, it is often about what will grow the way you want, rather than about what we like, and I admit I've got a long and troubled history with trying to grow more interesting things in a bed like this, because almost anything tall (anything deciduous in particular) will always be snaking away from the wall toward the light. As a general rule, evergreen material will grow much more reliably upright even when the light is one-sided. So from a maintenance and looking tidy perspective, you could do a lot worse than a row of liriope, daylilies, or annuals. So much depends on what kind of a gardener you are; how much effort you want to go to to choose and source plants and so on, and then what kind of maintenance you want to do. For example, what would look quite spectacular along this wall, and go with the somewhat manicured impression that the house itself makes, would be an assortment of specialty conifers and evergreens, the type that are narrow and slow growing, either upright or weeping or just narrow by nature (or even spiralled or otherwise topiaried), either just mulched or dressed up with colourful lower-growing plants. But those plants you have to go hunting for, and it takes some work to arrange them. And then there's the option of containers (on gravel or mulch) and/or wall art. Or vines on trellises, that would require you to tuck them all the time and then clear them in winter. It all depends on what kind of work you want to do initially and ongoing. But what about the area along the fence? You might be able to create a more generous bed there. You can certainly borrow light from across the fence, and if you can also borrow airspace above the fence, then some small trees might even work. KarinL

"we would have to have all the facts of the quality of the plants.. ball and burlap vs pot .. source [bigboxstore?? ].. how rootbound the pot may have been and what you did about it ...... how they were planted.. when ... how well they were watered the first summer... how much mulch was applied ... what if any weedwhip damage .. what if any lawn spray might be involved ... how you dealt with a pot full of peaty potting media in your bad clay ... which you said was already swampy .... even in drought ..." Bought them in 2007 when they were approximately 16" tall from a nursery going out of business. They were potted. Hole was dug twice as deep and wide as the pot, with compost placed at the very bottom of the hole before putting the unpotted roots in the hole, and backfilled. I haven't mulched them, and we don't use string trimmers on the arbs to avoid trunk damage. The farthest we go is using a walk behind, and pulling any weeds or tall grass. I never said my lawn was swampy. It doesn't flood, The ground doesn't sink while walking or driving over it. My boots become wetter from morning dew. I didn't start spraying for spider mites until an infestation in 2011. Before that time, I was under the impression arbs were impervious to almost all wildlife... clearly not so in my region. I don't spray my lawn for weeds. This is the only one with any issues. At the very least the others aren't stressed.

I think you have your answer: those seedlings look severely burnt. I would take them out of that medium ASAP and put them in some non-fertilized soil. That organic Jiffy stuff...organic soils tend to be so rich that they can even cause something akin to fertilizer burn. If you added a fertilizer layer, and have been watering with miracle grow (no matter how little a dose), they must be on fertilizer overload. Doesn't take much with plants of that size. Have no idea about the expert gardener potting soil. I would transfer them to some non-fertilized potting soil (NOT miracle grow potting soil). Before you transfer them, I would wash out the potting soil several times to try and remove some of the nutrients - these guys seem overloaded, and could do with just some basic growing medium. If you do that now, they should be able to rebound somewhat in 2.5 weeks.

So as it turns out you are correct, the transoms do separate from the window units. Our builder told us the cost to tear apart/reassemble the units would cost more in labor than a whole new unit. I'm fighting for a cost breakdown now. The cost for three new window units was about $8200 (labor + materials). They are charging us $2K for a full day labor even though it is a half day job because the framers have to come back with a special machine. I'm fighting this labor charge too. We decided to just replace the two windows in the sunroom (same transom, just 6' window unit instead of 5' window unit, making the overall window opening 7'). The cost to only replace 3 windows is $5900. I'm not thrilled and I'm hoping that fighting for the reuse of the transoms and the labor charges will bring us down a bit more. In the grand scheme of things this is a small charge in terms of what we're already spending and the look in that sunroom would eat at me forever if I didn't fix it. But I'm angry that the mistake should have been avoided (and therefore already paid for through our mortgage allotment). You live and you learn. Thank you for all of the advice and feedback.