You guys are going to hate me for suggesting this, but i would say russian olive. Now, take away the fact that down south it is horribly invasive. You can pollard them and use the branches and laves as mulch, the flowers attract all kinds of pollinators (and smell wicked). They dont get massively tall, yet still can provide some good shade, dappled light, or even trimmed for maximum light on the ground. They add nitrogen to the soil, and can take some crazy abuse, therefore making able to "nurse" less tough trees until they get large enough to be able to handle harsh conditions, The wood is also very dense and is amazing firewood. Personally, as long as the trees are functional in some way (aside from the obvious) I welcome them. The only tree that I have that wouldnt be thought of as "usefull" is a Ginkgo. I love history, and had a facination with dinosaurs as a kid, so this living fossil is perfect for me. The other thing is, you can get a flowering/ornamental pear, ornamental cherries and crab apple trees, and graft edible branches on them, making "useless" trees functional. To be fair, shade trees would be useful in some places, making you able to grow some plants that wouldnt be able to grow in full sun (climates like arizona). I couldnt imagine growing tomatoes in full sun all day in australia for instance, without lots of water. Some other double duty plants I can think of are grapes, nausturium, linden (edible new leaves), ostrich ferns (fiddleheads), mushrooms (break down wood, builds soil, and you can eat them if you cultivate the right ones), roses, alder, locusts, redbuds, acacia, any legume family tree, walnuts (ive seen people use them in spots to discourage almost all plant growth where they didnt want any, almost like using the problem of jugalans to their advantage), maxamillion sunflower, passiflora.....

Woodland, Your peaches are damaged by either Oriental Fruit Moth (OFM) or Plum Curculio (PC). They have some differences but the end result is the same - both insects cause most damages on peaches (fruit). You don't see them because larvae are hatched inside the fruit. Cut the fruit up, you'll see damage inside. Sometimes, the larvae are still there. Sometimes they are gone to build the next generations of trouble. Fruit that are damaged will drop prematurely. Pick up all those fruits. Throw them in trash. Do not compost or let them lie around on the ground. Don't let those buggers go underground to build their life cycle. If you spray, you need to time it before you see damages. Spray when tiny peaches are formed. The longer you wait, the more chance that they will beat you to your peaches. Once you see damages on your fruit, it's too late. Pick them all off and wait for next year. If you see some "clean" peaches left on your trees, you can safe them by spraying. Spray organically would be with Surround, a kaolin clay product. Spray chemically, I use Triazicide Once and Done, a product by Spectracide Others use other pesticide that work for them. Greenhouse - your could have both borers and canker. For borers, look around soil line or below for holes with oozes. I use a coat hanger wire and try to kill borers in the holes. Some spray with Triazicide, mentioned above. I have not need to spray for borer yet. For canker - you don't have much choice but make sure a tree is healthy and hope it will heal itself. If you read any post about peach problems on this forum, you will come across the following problems: OFM and PC damages, borers, Peach Leave Curl, canker and shot holes. Those are the prominent problems most grow peach growers have to deal with. Keep reading those posts, the problems and answers are similar.

The most recently posted Long Island street view is from 2012! No proof they are still there after the 2 polar vortex winters. And the other recent winter that was very cold in New England but not as much down here. (2016 IIRC: well below 0F on Martha's Vineyard. Have no idea how LI fared) They often look out of place in typical residential settings but I think those twin Seattle trees suit the house and are well taken care of so I give them a pass! Good catch GG. I am actually wondering if the NW DC, Bethesda, and Baltimore trees survived this horrid summer...by far the most humid I can remember. We barely had any comfortable dewpoints throughout September, not until the last few days. USUALLY cold fronts start pushing in some crisp weather by the 2nd week of Sept. It was a constant steambath since May. And yes it is humid compared to the PNW, but constant dewpoints 70F or above are not normal at least up here. There's a reason you see at least a few old ironclad rhodies in the DC/Baltimore area, but none in the deep south. And other than the late June/early July drought/heatwave - just long enough to be a nuisance - incredible rainy spells, one after another. I'm lucky to have only lost a couple important rhodies to root rot. OTOH it was nice to not worry about watering the 6 or so new planted camellias in my garden. They are so thirsty in the first year!

In my opinion, any nursery offering the standard commercial form of this species in the Piedmonts and plains south of the Mason-Dixon or Ohio River valley (which is all that is ever offered; nobody yet has a special resistant clone or hybrid) should be shunned. Trees should NOT be 3 to 10 year annuals. The last time I went back to my childhood neighborhood in Northern Virginia, I noticed that all of the old blue spruces were either dead or horribly sick looking. Even in the suburbs of Philadelphia, many of them do not look good although due to the generally higher levels of horticultural stewardship there they at least get removed if they look awful. In the highland towns of central PA you can still find ones that look OK - although they are not always trouble free even there - anywhere summer averages stay in the low 80s. If I were willing to be a more public persona I'd go on some kind of crusade to reform American residential landscape planting practices. I'm sick of seeing hideous, sick or weedy trees in suburban lots. There's no FDA-equivalent PTA (plants and trees administration LOL) to say "hey, this plant causes long term problems, don't use it in your area" and apparently, a complete lack of nurseries having any gumption to tell people "I"m not going to sell that, it doesn't do well here, here's an alternative". Maybe horticulture needs to be tought in schools as a part of basic home economics...I mean, really basic, like, how not to get into credit card debt. "If you notice a tree looks like crap in 95% of the yards in your area, don't plant it." How hard is that for people to understand? (But that's why I compare to the FDA, since most people do not have the science education to understand Rx drugs. Apparently it IS hard for most people to understand. So it's mostly an indictment of the in-it-for-the-quick-money nursery and landscaping industries. Of course, I don't actually think there should be a "PTA", it would probably just be a revolving door with Picea pungens pushers in "big nurse" - the wholesale nursery industry!) I haven't actually lived in a residential area in the UK for many years (I took a summer semester there once), but if I use the more recent memory of visiting the admittedly somewhat posh town of Rye, England...I now think to myself, if this had been an American town, 1/3 of the trees would look sick or ill-suited to the climate. In other words, part of the picturesque quality was merely the avoidance of horticultural disgust by not having to look at sickly or ill-planted trees. Just taking Cecil County as an example, no, obviously you will never have a English-style gardening culture here as you do in tony pockets of the US like Nantucket or Martha's Vineyard. That's not what I'm asking for. Just wave a magic wand and get rid of: blue spruce, white pine, bradford pear and leyland cypress, and it would look A LOT better around here.