Oooh, lindens smell SO GOOD and the bees love them. I have a Little Leaf Linden I planted (it's 2' tall right now! LOL!) and I'm chomping at the bit for it to be bigger. I think I'll get another one.

Thanks Anna. My only concerns with linden is size and sap. I would hate fo rmy neighbors driveway to get sticky on cars etc. I think they drop somthing like this in the summer. So Im a bit on the fence with Linden only due to space really, although great trees I agree.

Did you mean nectar? I've never seen linden trees drop nectar, though tulip poplar definitely does. I've been rained on by tulip poplar before!

i walk in the city under linden trees in bloom (planted by city as street trees) and have never had anything drip on me.

Yes, thats probably more like it. I dont have direct experience with Lindens so you are likey correct. In any case I suppose whatever I do it wouldn't be really fair to mess up my neighbors driveway with seeds, fruit, nectar whatever. Something for me to consider. Thanks Anna. I know you did not suggest but im amazed how big Tulip Polars get.

Stewartia is gorgeous but needs shade. Not sure your exposure. You can't hardly go wrong with any of those choices, you'll see all of them in beautiful display around your neighborhood. If you have the shade, I'd go with stewartia, just due to its being more unusual. But it is a tad fussy. I've seen some pretty ones in your zone though, it can be done.

Lindens are very popular street trees near you, (I used to live in Philly) and I don't know if they cause big litter problems, I never heard anyone complain but that is just my anecdotal experience. People have told me they hate prickly sweetgum seed heads but I haven't heard much about linden.

Thanks Pink Mountain. I really like the Stewartia as well but I think I am going to pass for those very reasons that you mentioned. This spot is Northern exposure so it receives full sun by afternoon and just about remains until sunset. I too read about water needs which I am not sure I can keep up with. I know the disadvantages of fast growing trees but I also think I would be waiting a long time for a stewartia to look substantial.

Two other options for maximum impact minimum time are redbud and crab apple. Both will be looking fantastic in three years or less depending on the size you get at the start. Also kousa dogwood if you want to mix it up a bit, not quite as fussy as the native dogwoods.

I'd skip the crimson maple (Acer platanoides 'Crimson King') Norway maples are considered an invasive species in much of the eastern half of the country; it gets huge (40' is only the lower end of its size range.....it could get as much as 80' tall) and that dark foliage works a little like a black hole, sucking the light out of the landscape.

The issue with lindens is their attraction to aphids. By midsummer they are deeply infested and it is the aphid excrement (honeydew - a sticky, sweet substance) that rains down on any thing underneath.

The stewartia does not require shade - it is fine in full sun, especially in an open, northerly aspect. Not at all a fussy tree, it does like a nicely moist soil condition (but well drained) and acidic soil. My personal choice of any tree - in fact, I planted a grove of them in my old garden :-)

The paperbark is a stunning tree but slow growing. And its best look is in winter :-) And the dogwood would appreciate some shade - they are a woodland understory tree.

Of that list, I'd hone in on the saucer magnolia - a reasonable size and relatively fast growing compared to the others (skipping the Norway maple!). Plus, it is gorgeous in bloom.

Gardengal Thank You. You ran through many of my own thoughts and concerns on these and enlightened me on some key aspects! I really like the idea of a Saucer Magnolia. I actually just planted a Little Gem in my back yard last year. Do you have any Saucer cultivers in mind? I would prefer a more upright and larger tree variety for the space.

Never knew so many existed.

http://thehoneytreenursery.com/Magnolias.php

Yes, I don't think stewartia is particularly fussy in general, and it can be grown. I would grow it on northern exposure in PA in a heartbeat. But if you have that thick clay soil that is common in SE PA you may need to amend it for both pH and drainage. But that was pretty much standard gardening procedure back when I lived there. The "full sun to part shade" aspect of stewartia means it can grow in full sun depending on what other stresses it gets. Which in a northern exposure might not be too many, depending on whatever else is going on in your yard.

Kousa dogwood has some of the characteristics of stewartia, a similar bark, can have white flower and red fall foliage. Does not have the scent and the flowers aren't quite as showy. It's not as sensitive to needing shade, but again, I have seen both native and kousa dogwoods growing in full sun quite well depending on conditions. I have a native dogwood in my yard in full sun and it is growing, although not thriving like gangbusters. I baby it. We had kousas die on us when they were planted up next to a stone wall in full sun. The wall absorbed heat in the summer and reflected it back onto the trees, plus they got a lot of wind in an exposed position, so they were toast. I can't imagine with northern exposure in a typical suburban Philly yard either type of dogwood wouldn't do well with some TLC. But magnolia is gorgeous too. It has some of the same issues as all the other choices. A good nursery person at a good nursery should be able to steer you to a good saucer cultivar.

I wouldn't obsess about soil and wind unless you know you have some problem. But if you want a less fussy tree, a good disease-resistant crabapple is not as picky about soil, unless yours is wet a lot. There are cultivars with tiny apples that don't mess up the yard. I have prairie fire in my yard and it is gorgeous when in bloom and nice enough the rest of the year. A little boring in winter, the bark is nothing special. But then I have a magnolia too, best of all worlds!

There are better red maples out there that aren't invasive, like a hybrid between silver maple and red maple. Won't get huge in your lifetime probably. Another option, aforementioned sweetgum, they sell seedless cultivars.

I'm not a fan of pink, so saucer magnolias are not my faves :-) But I really like the yellow flowered varieties. 'Sunsation' is one that most closely resembles the large flower and shape of a saucer mag and it has a reddish blush on the unopened buds. It is also a bit of a later bloomer, so typically escapes the late spring frosts that can wipe out the saucer flowers. 'Yellow Bird' is another great selection. Smaller flowers but more of them and on a faster and larger growing tree

Oh yes, I forgot about those yellow ones. I just planted one last year as a memorial to my mom, a "butterflies" cultivar. It is gorgeous.

Why would you want a tree placed left of center instead of a pair of them that would do something for framing the house and partially screening, at least tempering, the neighboring houses? If I was going to do a single tree at your proposed location I would want it to be large and, ultimately, sheltering of the house ... not smallish and screening it.

Forgot to mention, I would stop undercutting the corner shrubs and work toward growing the foliage all the way to the ground. If you don't stop, it's going to end up as the mushrooms-on-stilts look. They will be better as domes.

The National Arborertum developed a series of Magnolias designed to bloom a bit later to try to escape frost damage. http://www.usna.usda.gov/Newintro/magnoli1.html

Agree completely with Yardvaark.

Oh I thought you were planting two trees. Perhaps you could get someone from the gas company out to mark where it is and dig around it. I know they are always advertising "call before you dig." Not sure if they do it for free. I guess it would not be the end of the world if you only had one, but two would give you twice the options (unless you wanted total symmetry which is what your house has going for it!) and double the chance of at least one of them being successful. ;)

If you want to do one tree I would go for a red maple, (not norway) and a mixed planting around it, nix the symmetry reinforcing arrangement of shrubs dotting every corner and feature. Make the frame of the house (as seen from the street) an "L" shape starting with the tree as the top of the L on the left and stretching other mixed plantings along the house. You could keep two of the yews but nix the meatball shrubs around the light post in favor of something lower that makes your walk look more open and inviting. Another nice tree for that kind of arrangement that you may have overlooked is river birch, like a nice three trunk one. That's the kind of birch that will do best in your situation, the white ones tend to be short lived, albeit gorgeous while they last.

Thanks Pink Mountain. I'll have to get 'Call before you dig' out to markout my utilities again (811) and yes, free.

I really do like the two (2) tree option better, only concerned about gas line.

If the top of the L is the tree location, where is the bottom of the L? At slope bottom? Sorry, alittle mixed up on L postion. I follow the general concept just not orientation.

And, yes. The concensus and now your added reasoning suggests Azeleas need to go. They also create a difficult sight angle when pulling out of the driveway so this has been a recurring thought to remove. I'll let the flowers get spent first :-) Might transfer to the backyard, a shadier spot.

Shapening blades for center Yew bush too!

After I verify gas, I'll send over a concept with plant call outs and placement.

Thanks!

If you nix the tree on the right of Yaardvarks drawing, you have a more or less "L" shaped planting with the bottom of the L being bumpy. But that is not the whole beauty of his design. For the bottom end of the "L" you have many options. I am not good with the photo editing software so I can't make a mock up. Your house has strong symmetry, which is a plus, which is why Yaardvark's design compliments that. I would put a bed of colorful groundcover around the lamp post and beef up the lamp post so it forms the second tall element on the right. Perhaps a large hanging basket around the top of the lamp post, that would create a similar shape to a tree, but be a real paint to water! We have them around the lamp posts in my home town, the city has special long armed wands to water them with. But only if I absolutely could not do a tree on the other end. I am a tree lover though . . . it would make me happy to look out at TWO trees! And I am not disciplined enough to plant two of the same trees and have only four plants in my front yard, so I am not the person to advise you further. I think whatever you plant and whatever you do, it will very likely be a nice improvement! It's always a good time to plant a tree!

A couple of thoughts ... this is purely speculation but since the gas line will be originating within the ROW (lower level) it's likely to be fairly deep relative to the upper level of the yard (planting level for trees.) With a gas line, there's not danger (as there is with old sewer lines) of small, clogging roots infiltrating the line. The potential for danger would come from a large root actually pressing on the line and pushing against it as it slowly grows. A medium/smallish tree sitting high above the line does not present much of a danger. A large tree growing in the parkway might.

That the shrubs at house corner are Yews makes their rejuvenation and reshaping a certain possibility. Yews can take ANY amount of hard pruning -- even being cut to a stump -- and come through with flying colors. It is not necessary to make the reshaping take a long period of time, and in fact, doing it that way is more "painful." The key is to achieve a close enough approximation to the shape without worrying too much in the beginning about the size. Since a large root system already exists, regrowth is quite rapid. If you post a closer-in picture of the whole plant and a little of its surroundings, with the camera held level with the plant center, I can give you better guidelines of the profile that would get you to the end result the quickest.

I suggest that where the bed line ties to pavement it is at 90* sharp rather than some lazy looking angle. Also, I would consider making an interior corner of the bed 90*. The grass portion of the yard is small and if you try to do interior curves, juxtaposed next to other, larger curves, it's going to look funky. A hard inside corner will look clean, tidy, even dressy. The quarter circle beds around trees should be literally perfect circular sections, not egg-shaped "circles" or with flat spots of the circumference, or of such large diameters that the bed line wants to tie to the pavement at angles different than 90*

.

There's nothing wrong with having azaleas there, they have just gotten a little large for that space as you realize, and are making your walkway look obscured and less than inviting. Maybe start with transplanting one, the one closest to the street, that's what I would do. But I'm a softie for all plants. I'm sure they are gorgeous in bloom. There are many ways to implement this vision with many different plants. Two or one tree is really a matter of preference. Sometimes you have to compromise. Most small trees have relatively shallow roots though, at least that is the case with all of the trees you've mentioned except maybe the maple and I'm not sure about the linden but I think you've ruled that out.

There's not one way to decorate a room or one way to landscape a yard. Just as is, your yard is dominated by dark blobs that call attention to themselves as dark blobs. Putting some more airy elements out front will make the whole yard look more inviting. And having groundcover on that hill will make you happy not to mow. Have fun!

When
trimming, keep in mind that this is a matched set of “bookends,”
so they should be exact, mirror image duplicates of each other as
much as possible. I would think of the trimming project as a
challenge … as if you were involved in a manufacturing process
making a machine project on a lathe or something along those lines.
It would not be at all detrimental to use a tape measure to double
check dimensions for matching throughout the process. I would rough
out the shapes of both before fine tuning either.

The
place to begin is standing back well away from them trying to
envision what they are to become. If the shrub needs to be moved a
little left, right or forward, this is the time to notice it and
account for the adjustments you’ll need to make in the cutting. It
really barely matters where the plant roots are located. If you the
shrub to be 4” to the right, “move” it there with the cutting
process. It’s important to envision the finished product before
cutting because there is a substantial part of them that won’t get
any cutting at all. If you just charged up on them and started
hacking away, there’s a good chance you’d cut some wrong parts
off.

Since
the pair of shrubs are matched, the first cuts to make should
determine the height. (To match the pair, follow a line on the siding
of the house as a guide. Don’t measure from the ground.) Keep in
mind that you do NOT want to cut at the place where you envision the
limits of the finished product to be (the red line in picture.) There
are three reasons for this. As soon as you finish cutting the
plant it’s
going to grow and if you cut it at the finished height, in a
short time it will grow too large. The second reason is because, even
though you tried hard to make it a perfect shape, it’s not going to
end up as perfect as you’d hoped for. Later, when you need to trim
and try to perfect it again, you
will want to be cutting only in the newer, softer, easier-to-cut
foliage, rather than in the hard, sticky, woody portion. If
you don’t cut a little smaller in the first place, you’ll
probably end up where the next cutting has to dip somewhere into the
woody portion of the plant again. This is a royal pain. If you make
the plant a little smaller to begin with, it gives you a “cushion”
against having this happen. In general, I find that people have a
strong resistance to cutting the plant smaller (the blue line in the
picture.) But do yourself a favor and get over this. If you
mistakenly cut this plant to a stub, in two years you’d barely
remember your error because it would be pretty large again. In
cutting it just 6” less than you want it to be, in two months
you’ll barely remember or notice that you did that.

The
third reason you want to cut the plant a little smaller than the
“finished product size” is because the more foliage you remove from the
top portion of the plant, the greater it is that you expose the
bottom portion (the part that is undercut and desperately needs to
grow) to more light and an improved chance of quicker growth.

Between
the yellow line (which represents the ground plane) in the picture and the shrub, there is nothing at all
to cut … until you get higher up to the blue line. At this cavity
at the lower portion of the shrubs, all the foliage will be left
untouched so it can continue to grow as quickly as possible. The goal
is to keep the upper portions of the shrub trimmed so that it shades the lower portions the least as possible. Even if you want the shrubs to be larger than what I'm showing, for now you should trim them as I'm showing because you're in a corrective phase trying to regain the lost lower foliage.

19Kev, your home is charming and beautifully maintained; This will be the icing on the cake, like when your shrubs are in bloom all year round!

Yardvaark -What a wonderfully detailed lesson!! Thank you. If working with a more overgrown shrub, in a prime location such as this, where cutting to the green line would result in practically all the green needles being removed, would you alter the process?

Lots of tutorials online too, on pruning azaleas. You can easily get them back down into shape and looking more open. But wait until after they bloom. Also, don't just cut the ends of the branches to a set shape. If you prune like that with azaleas you'll get spotty blooming just at the end the next year. Properly pruned plants will have healthy growth to repair and fill in what you have pruned so prune with that in mind. Flowering shrubs mostly bloom on new growth so if you only cut the ends of all the branches, then next year your bloom will be focused mostly on the ends if you just cut that part. But again, you don't have to read this, just google and you'll find lots of tutorials.

Yardvaark when is your book coming out or might you already be published? I truely value your time and teachings on this topic.

I have seen first hand Yews in my neighborhood get chopped and now you would never know it happened. I have no problem working toward the direction you provided and will plan to do so.

The encroaching shrub is a burning bush and very vigorous at that. While I cut back two others this winter time got away from me to get at that one (over a few year really).

I found that the azaleas are just as resilient on regrowth. The purple one in the last picture got half sized two years ago.

A work in progress but you gave me some pointers with my back yard, made a few planting errors but its a work in progress as well.

By the way, I might completely remove Yew in back corner of garage.

Pruned it so I could see more of my yard in the back but its just too big. Perhaps I'll cut to the ground and reshape as a smaller shrub (2')

Burning bush at the front garage corner got half sized. Much better.

All trees are japanese maples and one behind the Yew.

Good advice on pruning. I am in fact a selective pruner on those, the two azaleas were as high as the light post. I half sized them last year. Think I'll at least half size them again after bloom is over. Depends on Tree(s) placement.

@Dalton ... the process I described is for a YEW and would work on most deciduous plants. But it would not work on Junipers or other evergreens which will NOT regrow once their green needles have been pruned off.

@19Kev77 ... whatever advice I gave you on the back yard I hope it's working in your favor. (But I'm sure it wasn't to use a single row of anything as an edging! :-))The yard looks somewhat familiar. I think the Yew at back of garage could work if it was a larger tree form. But there seems to be a conflict of forms between it and the adjacent tree.

Where Yew and Azalea meet, if there shape, size and juxtaposition requires that they butt up agaist one another, they may meet (as if one plant that is cleaved into two) at a single vertical joint. But it's hard to describe exactly where the line would be. It's determined by a conjoining of the shapes. I'm saying this is preferably to having the predominant shrub be misshapen, and the subordinate shrub be misshapen ... with an indistinct and fuzzy gap between the two.

(But I'm sure it wasn't to use a single row of anything as an edging! :-)) - One of my planting errors both on design and plant. Some day they will find a new purpose. Its a bunch of Silva that IMO looks like weeds after purple flowers are spent.

My goal with that Yew is to be able to see past it which is why I first opened it up and made it 'leggy'. Would a tree form invlove reducing some of the legs and maybe starting over with top foliage?

"Would a tree form involve reducing some of the legs and maybe starting over with top foliage?" No. That would slow it down. It's in the tree form, but just needs to grow and become larger. Plenty of water, occasional fertilizer, hugs and kisses, etc.

If you like the azaleas but don't like the size, you could also consider replacing them with varieties that are smaller. I had white and pink "Gumpo" azaleas at my last house that were under 2 feet tall after 6 years. The have fine leaves and showy spring flowers.

In our current house, I planted the shortest mature height Encore azaleas I could find and they are 2 feet high after 5 years. I may trim them just a bit this year but they are slow to gain height.

Looks like you have a GREAT helper!