I don't even note her writing style. Perhaps, because I've seen what she does in person, it always hits home with me. Her house and the businesses are far more stunning in person than pictures convey. I grew up in the neighborhood that she now lives in, so I remember several iterations of the house and buildings. The house is a tiny restored jewel, though it is nearly impossible to tell from her pictures that it is a small yard.

Actually, I just remembered a long time ago my friend had a California fan palm in his back yard, and it was grown locally from seed. I believe it was in the ground for quiet a few years and it was well established. It pulled through the winters unprotected, but his neighbor hood "code" made him cut it down because it still had the beard on it and even when pruned they still did not like it, he was not so happy about that. But I think I will be going with the California fan palm. Our winters are dry and it only gets really cold here for about 2 weeks until it starts to warm up. I'll give it a try!

The right and left halves of the main house are not the same conditions and require either different shrubs, or, it's possible to use the same type but trim to different heights. (It is the top of all these shrubs that will be trimmed at a uniform height relative to the window bottoms.) I don't think we're to the point of calling for the right-hand shrubs to be removed, as we haven't seen good, face-on pictures of them with the windows in the background. I'm pretty confident that all the other shrubs should be removed based on their size and position. "... the bottom of the window trim is about 4 feet above ground on the left side, so max plant height should be just below that?" That would be my goal. If new shrubs are treated well -- never going dry, but not being constantly we either, and given some fertilizer, they usually can get up to decent size within a couple of years. They only need to be 3 1/2' high. ",,, should i push the HOA on some solution to cover the electrical box in front corner?" You have to be careful what you wish for. Sometimes the "cover" is more offensive than the box being covered, as the overall "object" can grow exponentially in size. I don't think it's necessary to cover the entire box per se. If there was a judiciously planted, arching foliage grass or two that covered mainly the bottom half, that would take care of the main offense. For the top half, I don't know how much you'd be willing to apply paint, but if in my yard, I'd be considering a neutral/camouflaged/non-offensive color ... and asking permission after the fact. But then, I would never live in HOA place so you'd likely be up against forces I couldn't anticipate or predict. I think you have the wrong idea about how to treat the holly tree. It is not the top of the tree that gets trimmed to keep it in check. It is the bottom of the canopy that gets limbed up so as to get out of the way of all ground activities, and so as to not "smother" the lower portion of the house. It is VASTLY easier to maintain this as a small tree than it is to maintain it as a giant shrub. The trunk(s) are retained while all the side branching is removed. One is visually safe to de-limb up to 50% of the total plant height (which would now be to the top of your garage windows. Next year, it will be a little more.) I'm sure you've noticed that whenever a plant has a lot of foliage removed, it turns around quickly and grows a bunch more somewhere else. Here, that somewhere else would be at what remains of the upper portion of the tree, especially the top. Consequently, after you remove limbs & branches to 50% of the height and the tree grows taller, it will automatically create a new ratio that has it appearing as though you only removed limbs & branches to 40% of the tree's total height. Keep it's back side trimmed about 12" away from the wall, which will never be noticed from the front. I'm sure this holly tree is planted too close to the house (as is the case wherever a builder installs a landscape.) You have the choice to accept its placement as long as you can, or get rid of it and start over with another tree better positioned. If you decide on the latter, it may be possible to start a new tree while the old one stands and then cut it down a bit later.

You might want to add the Hydrangea forum to the post. Or if it is too late to edit, simply copy the whole post, photos and all, and make the same post over there. https://www.houzz.com/discussions/hydrangeas I am not sure if you can do anything to fix this. The tree form removes the lower branches that might support the upper branches. If you do additional pruning, it may send out longer, whipping branches with fewer, larger/heavier blooms, so I don’t think that pruning is likely to improve the situation. Is there something you can use to temporarily support branches if you are home when there is a downpour?