MANY THINGS.. THAT ARE LITERALLY... crikey ... growing.. IN A FENCE ... are carp plants.. planted by bird droppings ... when they sat on tyhe fence and deposited them ... odds are ... your instinct is right.. and they all should go ... personally.. it would be a summer job for me ... so in the mean time.. i would let them leaf out.. get the IDs .... and have at them ... however ... if your motivated now ... it will be much easier.. to simply get rid of them ... and then.. once its all cleaned up ... then design and plant your own future nightmare.. lol .. like we all did ... that bath tub or whatever ... i know a lot of gardeners who would die for that in there yard .. so much design potential ... heck.. you could even make a fish pond out of it with a pump ...and im just talking 10 cent goldfish ... be done with it.. clean it all out.. and by fall .. you will be happy with it all ... ken

Gorgeous and the first I have seen or heard of it. I too wonder why we don't see more of them. I wonder if they would like to live in Houston. We have crepe Myrtle every where here including in my yard, they are in full glorious bloom. I hate how some people have committed crepe murder by cutting them every year to disfigure them so they look so ugly. We were driving in an older area recently and not a single crepe Myrtle had been disfigured that way. They were some of the tallest most gorgeous trees I have seen. It was wonderful to see them as nature intended them to be. I don't know who the idiot was that began the mutilation but they deserve to have some trimming done on them. Mine are completely natural no hack job involved and I love them. That really is a beautiful tree is it near you?

Yes, remove it. It is not a valuable tree - it's basically a throwaway in the nursery industry. All prunus are susceptible, some significantly more than others. You can treat with a fungicide and a lot of pruning, but I wouldn't bother with a purple leaf plum. If you're looking for a spring flowering tree, consider service berry (amelanchier)

You have all been tremendously helpful, and I really can't thank you enough. I probably shouldn't admit this to plant lovers but this is one area of the new house build that I had really hoped I could just turn over to the landscape architect and not delve into too deeply myself. Clearly I do need to dig in and learn more about my plants, especially for this area, and I really appreciate the help in getting me started. I've gone down the internet rabbit hole on what exactly is the difference between a tree and shrub. Before this I probably would have said shrub = shorter than me, tree = taller than me, and that's why we've always said trees for that spot. In reality, I think want things that are in the gray area between tree and shrub height. I'm going to do some measuring and looking at roof heights on the plans for a sense of scale and go from there. We want a tree "look," but definitely not 30'. I plan to make a spreadsheet of the options suggested here and see what works best. I may have more questions. Again, thank you!