"I have my raincoat for the resultant eggs" While they have their draw backs, like a slightly unpleasant odor when you put your noise in the flowers, Cleveland pears meet most of your requirements. Relatively fast growing, white flowers, compact, and taller than they are wide. Etc. Being more compact they are less prone to damage than Bradfords. Depending where you are, Apricot trees can be a very attractive addition to the yard. In this area (20 miles east of Raleigh NC) they are an early blooming tree that are relatively small. Problem they are hard to find. We have been trying to catch some at the right time in the spring for several years now to take cuttings. We are going to try again this spring.

I wish I would have known, qmaster...I would have sent you the 12' builder-planted Bradford I tore out of the ground for free! Seriously, however, if your mother-in-law has a "small yard", as you say, it may be best to cut your losses here. BPs can get very large and with little doubt will eventually drop limbs, or shatter completely in an ice or wind storm. If it's anywhere near the house...well, you probably like your mother-in-law more than that!

My husband and I already went throught the whole remove vs keep the tree debate. I agree that Bradford Pears are not the ideal tree, however we had to remove several trees because the orginal owners planted trees way too close to the house and we were having issues with branches hanging on the roof, circulation/algee/mold, etc. We knew we wanted to keep at least one older tree, otherwise we would have had no mature trees. Trust me we thought long and hard about our decision and talked with several people (friends, neighbors, arborists) about which trees to remove vs keep (if any). We had a grouping of really old birch trees that were messy....hanging on the house, dropping branches, and hidding the house (planted all along the front of the house...completely hiding it). So we choose to loose the birches and keep the pear since the pear was off to the side of our house and not hanging on the house as much. The pear tree also adds privacy to our deck and our backyard (which is actually our side yard). We decided if we would have removed the pear tree it would have left us just too "exposed". Our deck sits 8' off the ground, so for another tree to get large enought to provide us that kind of privacy again it would have taken at least 15 years or more. Our pear tree, although way past due in pruning (we are new owners so it wasn't our doing) was actually in good shape (hasn't lost any limbs and isn't spliting). We are probably going to cable the large V limbs so that it helps prevent spliting in the future as much as we can help it from happening. We figured we will keep the pear for as long as we can and then when we eventually do loose the tree and HAVE to remove it then we will deal with loosing our privacy...but for now we figured we would keep the tree and enjoy it while we still can.

Actually, the latin name for bradford pears is Pyrus calleryana 'Bradford'. Bradford is a cultivar of callery pear. There are newer cultivars that have sligthly better structural integrity and tolerances to fireblight and Southern summer heat. For example, 'Bradford' has the most excellent red fall foliage and is highly resistant to fireblight (according to Michael Dirr). 'Capital' is susceptible to fireblight, as is 'Aristocrat', which also doesn't flower as profusely as 'Bradford'. Chanticleer (the trademark name for 'Stone Hill' or 'Cleveland Select') isn't as fireblight resistant as 'Bradford', and doesn't show as much intense red fall color but is still a strong bloomer.