after alot of research i think i've settled on the shoestring acacia. the bottle brush tree is beautiful but i'm not sure if it would do ok on the north side of the house since most everything i read says full sun. plus i'm reading alot of conflicting info on it's growth rate and water needs. i've tried growing little johns before, but with no luck. either they don't like my soil or i didn't water them enough. the australian bottle tree might be a good one, but i think it's eventual height of 40' might be a bit much. and all of the older specimens i see and have found online are much wider, leading me to believe that it spreads as it ages and might not look great with that much pruning later in life. so for the shoestring acacia, it seems to do well in either full sun or partial sun, needs very little watering, has little litter, it's airy enough to allow plantings beneath it, grows very fast, only reaches 20-30' in partial sun, and has virtually no pests or diseases here. they're also recommended for poolsides and often planted right up against large buildings to break up the wall, which tells me i shouldn't have a problem with the roots along my patio or foundation. i also think the shadow that these trees would cast on the garden below would be very pretty and only get better with a little breeze. and since the trees don't seem that heavy and rigid, if for some weird reason one did happen to fall over into a neighboring yard, i don't believe they would cause as much damage as a heavier bottle tree, pine, or palm. the only drawback is that it does not have very dense foliage, so the privacy it provides is limited. however, because of it's flexible and weeping branches it doesn't have a problem getting entangled with other trees which should allow me to plant several shoestring acacias together like a "mini grove" at the end of the patio. this should increase the overall density from the 2nd floor, and make the view from the bottom patio more interesting with more pretty trunks. i'll just have to plant them at odd intervals so they look more natural and less like a man-made row of trees. does anyone have any suggestions on the spacing of these trees? pagancat, i've never been to the DBG before. i live in Imperial Valley, CA (roughly the same climate as phx but slightly milder). i use the tucson and phx sections of gardenweb because there's more info and activity and i know if it will grow there then it will grow here. we just dont get winters as cold as yours because we live below sea level and we generally have more humidity due to all of the agriculture around us. DBG sounds liek a super fun place though, i might have to check it out as a mini-vacation :) grant, running? really? have you lost your mind?? lol

As far as raising the beds goes, there's a sewer drain in the corner of my yard - and I'll be leaving an area for water to drain into that between the beds. This is basically how it currently drains, and I'll continue to direct the water in that fashion. I am not going to worry about fastigate/columnar trees shading shrubs below them. My backyard is "full full full" sun and all shrubs will do just fine. I don't have many other options for trees and going with an Armstrong will be one of the narrowest choices I can make. The shade will do little to the shrubs below. The sun will still hit the shrubs from multiple directions as it crosses over my house in a diagonal path and will provide early in the day and late at night sun to any shrubs that may be shaded just a bit. I'm not too concerned about this. Thanks for the "Gold" maple option... that looks great! Now where to find these trees?! I've looked around at local nursery catalogs and can't even find the "standard" Armstrong maple... how do you folks go about hunting down good stock? I'm not into buying plants online; I want to see and inspect what I'm buying in person. If it helps, I'm in zip code 60108 if anybody has a helpful search... Thanks.

Hello again! I'm back and need someone to help me with the size and shape of a patio for our yard and with the placement of my children's playset. We just finished construction on our porch and deck and not even a week later the HOA rolled through to do their yearly inspections. They cited us on bare spots in the lawn. I guess they don't look back to see the "history" of the HOA applications for each home before they do the inspections. Anyways, my plan to deal with this is to up the timeline on adding a patio to our yard. I don't want anything super big or that puts me out on display in the middle of my yard. Our goal for the patio area is to make a connection between the deck steps and the basement areaway. The actual patio space will be used for some of my toddler's toys, possibly the grill (it's currently on the deck), and for either a propane or wood fire pit with chairs around it, the fire pit will not be built in. The next area I need help with is the placement of my children's play equipment. Where it currently sits I will not be able to add landscape timbers and mulch without being in the HOA's common area. Do I just move the playset 2ft forward and place the back timber on the lot line? Or do I try and angle the playset and group everything into one corner of the yard? The patio design I came up with... The current playset location... A potential spot in the corner of the yard...

Can you post photos? Climbing fig will not survive in Chicago so that's not it whatever it is :-) Zone 5 is also the very minimum any clumping type of bamboo will survive and even then you could expect to see a lot of winter die back.