Box is not the same as privet. Buxus sempervirens (box) is a lower growing small leaved evergreen. It CAN grow to 8 feet - after about 50 years and if unpruned. Privet (Various Ligustrums) is deciduous in colder areas and has larger oval leaves. It is a very greedy feeder and will deplete the soil making it difficult if you want to have any kind of flower bed in front of it. There are lots of plants suitable for hedging without resorting to privet. And since you only want to fill a 15 ft length you would not need many plants. Viburnum tinus, Hibiscus syriacus, hollies, beech, hornbeam, yew, Escallonia, various roses, some of the Berberis, bay (if it's hardy for you) and many different conifers can all be grown as a hedge. But would you consider just going for a mixed shrub border rather than a hedge? It would be less formal but you could have a selection of evergreen and deciduous and go for shape, foliage, flowers, fragrance, berries etc as you wish. In front you could put in some perennials and bulbs. Stick in some bird feeders for the winter. The neighbours would be screened and you would be adding an attractive and interesting area to your garden which you could enjoy from your patio. It would not need the regular clipping that a hedge would require. The neighbours could enjoy it from their side and you wouldn't have to go round to their property for maintenance.

Thanks for the tips guys! I'll try to start cutting the water back. It's tough because the stress occurs very quickly along my sidewalks and driveways - I live on a corner and have over 1000 lineal feet of sidewalk and a four vehicle driveway - all white Portland concrete, which I like to call the cookers given they absorb the heat of the sun all day long and keep the soil measureably warmer (yeah, I'm one of those with a soil thermometer). So the "body of the lawn can go 5-6 days without watering, but the edges stress after 4... Now here is where I am confused. I have been told that the thatch-humus layer must remain moist to promote decomposition. If it dries out, then decomposition halts and it will need to ramp up again. So, is it not counter-productive to let the lawn dry out, or am I misunderstanding you guys and when you say wilt you don't mean when KBG gets that grey-green stress color but just to the point the blades droop? I mow using a bell curve approach - first cut is 1-1/4 inch to wake the lawn and I ramp up each subsequent cut until I reach 2 inches in the spring and then ramp up in June to a height of 3-1/2 to 4 inches for the summer and ease back down starting in late August to a final winter nap height of 1-1/4 inch. Very rarely to I miss a cut, so 1/3 at a time is the norm, even when on synthetics and the rapid growth means mowing every third day... I try to use every trick in the book because I'm on the public water supply so my irrigation system costs me a few bucks... Unfortunately, the builder tore out ALL of the trees when he subdivided the lot and the only shade I have is from the house itself on the one side once mid-afternoon hits. That barely shades Looks like I'll be picking up a pallet of soybean meal on Monday...

You better buckle your seat belts cause it's gonna be a bumpy ride. I'm glad overall that I took my MIL in but it certainly has taken a lot of adjusting. The best advice I can give you is set some boundries now, and be prepared to change them as time goes on. Give her ( if possible) her own living space separate for yours. We are lucky enough to have two bedrooms and a bath on one end of our home that we have converted into an "apartment" (she calls it that) for her. She has a bedroom and a sitting TV type room and it has her furniture from her home in it arranged the way she likes it.(usually messy) She can get up and watch tv at all hours of the night if she wants, talk on the phone or do whatever in her space. She has her own bathroom full her of her stuff.( older people seem to have a lot of lotions and ointments and such for some reason) I no longer allow her to cook because she set fire to the kitchen 3 times but she is allowed to use the micro ( with supervision--she has been known to punch in 15 minutes to warm a roll). At night I unplug this stuff because she does get up a lot. She isn't doing this stuff to be spitefull or naughty--she just has lost the ability to think and reason. You cannot be angry or upset because she truly cannot help what she has become. When she first moved in it was stressful because she loved her things and would often remove my pictures and pillows to replace with her stuff. It really bugged me. Now she has a place that she can have her things and I can still have mine. As far as food choices, she's been with us for two years now and seems to enjoy what I cook. If she has a craving for something special I'm always willing to fix it for her and let her help me do the prep if she can. The dementia, physical weakness and mobility have really limited her on what she can do. She likes to sometimes sit in the kitchen while I cook just to have some girl talk. (thats another story--Ive been having the same "girl talk" for two years now--she forgets what she tells me) There are gonna be days that you will be so frustrated that you cant breath and you want to go screaming in the woods. This will consume your life. Eventually everything you do will have to be planned around her. Think long and hard about taking this on. For us it started out that "MOM was a little ditsy and had to stay with us after Dad died. She certainly had more ability to care for herself then. Be fully prepared to deal with the situation if they start to loose those abilitys--chances are they will. I wish you a lot of luck with this. Let us know how it's going for you and remember this site is a great place to ask or vent or rant. BELIEVE ME--it has been my saving grace to have a place to go where people understand what it's like.

A seed grown JM will NOT be the same as the parent plant but that does not mean the seeds are sterile :-) Named forms (cultivars) of Japanese maples are only propagated asexually, usually by grafting; infrequently from cuttings. Seed grown JM's will always just be generic species Acer palmatum regardless of their parentage. They may closely resemble the parent tree(s) or they may look nothing like it. So no, seeds from your named forms will not necessarily look anything like the tree they came from (and even if they do look exactly the same, they are not and cannot be called by that cultivar name). But you are free to collect and grow JM seeds from any source you can. You never know quite what you'll get and most will grow into charming small trees.