Welcome to gardening! I'll be a bit blunt here, and maybe others will disagree, but I don't think either of those trees are good choices for your situation. Here's why. When you say 7-8' away from the pool, do you mean the trunk will be that close or the edge of the tree canopy will be that close to the pool? That is not far enough away if you mean the trunk. You may be able to find citrus trees on true dwarf root stock that would be okay, but the canopy of a fully grown citrus tree is wider than fourteen feet, and they drop leaves. Can you plant the tree farther away? The olive tree gets far too large to consider it as a possibility. The trunks rise and would impact your decking, and it would be a disaster for your filtration system. They drop a lot of tiny white flowers and yellow pollen. If you got a fruiting olive you would have a purple-stained deck and pool and be bobbing for olives every time you took a swim. They also require a great deal of pruning. The Sunset Western Garden book has a section on trees suitable for planting around pools. You might want to take a look at it to see if anything strikes your fancy. It sounds like you are interested in a Mediterranean theme for your back yard, which will be lovely. Good luck with your project. Renee

Definitely the Sunset list is a good starting point, and the trees and palms they list mostly have in common leaves that are larger or held for a long period of time, and not constantly shedding. The root issue also needs to be addressed, and this is as much a function of space and depth of soil and whether you irrigate to encourage deep rooting as it is upon the choice of tree. Palms are generally recommended because they don't drop foliage all year round, but the flowers and fruits can be messy at times. It would also help to know whether you have an open pool or a pool cover. Definitely avoid trees with smaller leaves that are constantly dropping year round such as Mayten trees, because the pool skimmer has a hard time keeping up with these.

Nothing in a 5' X 5' square, the space should be mulched, to keep weeds down. Okay if you must, plant strawberries around the fig tree. If you plant strawberries, put stepping stone between the rows of strawberries,so you can pick both the strawberries & the figs, without stepping on the plants. You can plant another fig tree or blueberry plant 10 feet on center. Old fig trees can get to be 15 wide, if not pruned. Good Luck.

Thank you for your responses! I will try the Arizona page too. As far as the damage to masonry everything that I've read talks about the VINES doing the damage. I cannot find anything that talks about how their roots grow. It's not the vines I'm worried about but the roots. Do you think it's the roots cause a lot of damage as well? Thank you so much for any advice! It is greatly appreciated.