It is interesting how different the answers are to one question depending on the individual situation. I really appreciate the feedback. This area gets a good 5-6 hours of sun and is pretty protected from wind so whatever rose I plant there should at least have the environment to do well which would lead me to believe based on your responses that Bonica may be too large once it matures which means I may be back to The Fairy. Thanks again everyone!

Interesting. So I have been watching the fruity one for 3 years now, and it seems to have that yellowish tinge every year. I just thought it was its natural color. It does seem to have a lighter colored leaf even in summer. Below are some pix I've taken at different times of year. (Yes, I'm obsessed with the stupid tree :-). We did have a dry late summer, maybe that contributed. But on the other hand - look at the foliage color difference between the two hollies even in summer: 2016-11-12: 2017-01-12: 2017-08-16: 2019-05-22

Height depends on that winter. I live near the coast north of Orlando but not much colder and some years they have died back but recently they stopped dying back so they do get taller now (older one in shade is about 8'-9' maybe after a mild winter and no pruning) but I still would put something different in a spot if I wanted something in 15' range. Odd that others have problems with them sprouting more, they're notoriously difficult to propagate from seed from what I've read. Also, I've had mine for years and they have yet to spread -- I wish they would, though! A native small tree that has red tubular flowers (and interesting foliage in my opinion) is Red Buckeye but since that's the Southern edge of its native range, it's probably best if it got some shade (partial sun). Cherokee bean is similar but it's more definitely a shade plant and much harder to find. Bottlebrush/Callistemon, while not-native are Florida friendly, bloom all year like firebush do and are guaranteed to get the size you want and definitely are attractive to hummingbirds (though hummers favor my firebush over my neighbor's bottlebrush :P). I've seen some get bigger than 15' but they were very old and never trimmed, the plants are slow-growing so don't let their biggest heights scare you basically. Otherwise, I'd just put a small or slow-growing useful tree there like a nice citrus or dwarf fig and then put some firebushes around/underneath it and keep them trimmed until it gets tall enough. Firebushes are quite shade tolerant and still bloom plenty so planting them underneath a small tree would not be detrimental to them at all. Also with firebush it's best to buy the orange kind (has a reddish tint to leaves usually), not the yellow kind. Yellow one is not native to Florida. Edit: the height of hibiscus in your area can give you an idea of max height of firebushes since they roughly die back at same temperature where I live (aka not last "winter"). In Costa Rica I see hibiscus that are 15+ feet tall making giant screens but that height is impossible here due to it only being subtropical, not tropical.

Betty, Did you take the broken rose branch and root it? Might as well make lemonade when life gives you lemons. The wind here is ridiculous today. It is a wonder the row covers haven't blown away but I do have them pinned down pretty firmly. I have tried to keep the peppers warm by having them in the greenhouse during the day, and bringing them inside the house if I think the greenhouse will drop below 40 degrees or so. My poor pepper plants barely know what real sunlight is because they haven't seen it in so long. I want to plant all the rest of my hot-season stuff, but have been waiting for some consistency in the forecast too. Since I couldn't direct-sow anything today (I would have had to remove the row covers), I started a lot of warm-season herbs and flowers in flats, and a few veggies like cukes, melons, watermelons, Armenian cukes, etc. I hope to pop them out of the six-packs and into the ground the minute the first tiny bit of green pops up out of the soil-less mix. I intend to put bean seeds in the ground tomorrow. They raised tomorrow night's forecast low from 44 to 48, so I feel like it will be warm enough. Our 3-day average soil temp dropped from the low 70s to the mid or upper 60s with with this last cold front, but the soil in the raised beds is still pretty warm. Likely the row covers have helped them stay warmer by holding in the heat. Carol, I am concerned about the weather too. I am hoping that the cold spells haven't lasted long enough to cause bolting. If they do, they do....there's nothing we can do about it. The reason I have covered my onion bed's hoops with the 10-degree row cover for every cold spell is not because I thought the onions might freeze but because I hoped it would keep them warm enough that they'd be less likely to bolt. I guess we'll know in the next couple of weeks if they are going to bolt, and I am hoping they won't because they are so lovely right now and will make a great crop if they don't bolt and if hail doesn't get them. Our Sugar Snaps are producing faster than we can pick them and eat them. I guess it makes up for the early heat wrecking the crop the last two years. Either we need to start eating them at every meal, or I need to freeze some. I planted mine in paper cups in February and then got them into the ground as early as I could, but I planted a certain percentage of them every week for 3 or 4 weeks, trying to spread out the risk of a late freezing getting them. I also staggered the potato plantings quite a lot. The first two beds that I planted are the tallest, and the third bed is not far behind. They are getting too tall to cover so we're in trouble if we get another cold front, which I hope doesn't happen of course. I was looking at the first two beds a few minutes before sunset, and the plants look like they've grown 6-8 inches since Tim covered up those beds on Wed.evening. You can see the plants pushing and straining at the row cover. I think it keeps them so warm that they grow faster while it is on them. I haven't planted a single bean yet, but hope to rectify that tomorrow. We have a lot of rain chances in our forecast for next week, and since lately our rain has come only in little bits....a few hundredths of an inch here, a tenth of an inch there, we really need that rain. Maybe if I get the beans in the ground and then it rains, they'll sprout quickly to make up for going into the ground so late. You still might get more parsley volunteers. Just this past week, volunteers started popping up like mad. I imagine when we rototilled all the soil repeatedly while rebuilding the beds this spring, we exposed a lot of buried seeds to sunlight. While weeding on Wed. right before putting on the row covers, I saw volunteer seedlings of all kinds---okra, watermelon, ornamental purple-leaved peppers, flowers of several kinds, tomatoes, etc. I even saw basil and corn volunteers. The basil can stay but I'll yank out the corn since it is in the middle of a row of garlic. I know you don't like cilantro and won't try to change your mind about it, but I grow it near potatoes and I do believe it helps keep the potato bugs away. I planted about 30 lbs. of seed potatoes so we have row after row of potato plants and I haven't seen a single CPB yet. Grasshoppers, however, have arrived in full force. Dawn