You didn't mention what zone you are in. Sounds like your site is hot and sunny, and you want a low maintenance shrub? Carol Mackie might be too high maintenance and it appears to not like too hot and dry a spot? Ames St. John's wort Hypericum kalmianum 'Ames' is a hardy yellow flowered shrub if you can find one. A knock out rose is also hardy, disease free and floriferous. Wegeilas sp? come in many various sizes, lots of flowers and leaf colors to choose from vareigated to red to green and are easy to grow as well as hardy in full sun. Also, nearly any of the spireas would probably be easy to grow there.. check these for height and color of leaf and flower to suit your place. Evergreens offer various junipers.. low growing from the rug types or gold tipped varieties to the blue star.. then arborvitae come in various sizes.. Danica and hetz? midget are around two to three feet round.. others are available.. check out your local nursery.. there are lots of things available. Just make sure they're tolerant of dryish soil and low maintenance plants.. of course you'll have to water deeply and well once or twice a week during drought especially the first summer...It helps to make a sort of a narrow trench about a foot away from the plant so the water will soak down into the root area rather than down the slope when you do water. I know what you mean about hydrangeas in a hot dry spot.. the "hydra" means "water" I would guess.. Hope this helps..

Becky I ordered from them when I first started swapping, you have to be careful of the amount of seeds you get in the packages. I found that almost all the packs were opened a bit on the side at the very bottom and seeds were falling out. Other than that their seeds are of good quality and nicely priced. :) I went to Target yesterday, they have a great clearance rack full of gardening stuff. Unfortunately I didn't see anything that I could/would use or needed. :( I found their seeds too! They had Burpee Fordhook line, and the Sean Conway seeds. I noticed that the selection of Burpee seeds were completely different than the Burpee seeds I have found at Walmart and Lowes. :D YAY! I had the twins with me and they were not letting me look too much, so I only got a few packs, gonna check out a few more places this weekend and see what I can find.

Mat, yeah I have 2018 and 2019 to write up. I have all my notes. Just have to find time. I checked out Pepiniere casse noisette website. They do not list their rootstocks anywhere that I can find. What rootstocks are your pears, peaches, apricots on? Honestly, a lot of what they are selling, at least in apricots, peach, nectarines seem to me to be VERY marginal for their climate. In many case they mention useful for growing in pots but if that is the case how are they propagating for sale? I don't want to disparage them without information but my impression is they might be reselling . You absolutely need to be buying based upon root-stock. For apples I am not only buying on Bud118 as it has best cold hardiness and is vigorus for our short seasons - Bud9 is just too slow. Train and prune to keep the size you want. Pears on OHxF87 or 97 and prune/train. I have found PAW-PAWs to be marginal in 4b - still 3' tall after 5+ years. Blueberries don't like my soil so Haskasps and Currants are much better. You have better options than Indigo Gem, Aurora is good though. Pink Lemonade is like a zone 5/6 plant, I see little chance of it surviving. Both Whiffletree and vigneschezsoi are good options. Be aware that a 1-2 year old bare root grape vine will bear fruit 1-2 years faster than the same year rooted cuttings you will get from vigneschezsoi. If you are only buying a couple might want to spend a couple extra $$ to get fruit a whole year or 2 earlier. Somerset and Trolhaugen are good. Had a couple Brianna this year, not enough to really say. Get Bluebell as well. I suggest 10-15' between vines. Can go closer but I am of the hack back 90% every year and then let grow. Trollhaugen can put out 12-15' of growth in 1 year alone - plant closer and you have to keep on top of canopy thinning to avoid overgrowth. Apples and pears will benefit from bagging with ziplocs. Grapes I bag with Organza bags when starting to turn color. So far I am loosing 99% of stone fruit (plums) to plum curlico and the rest to birds/racoons (can't bag plums - they rot). All peaches die. Trying apricots but no fruit yet. Don't get too caught up on types of fruit. Buy something disease resistant on a hardy, vigorus rootstock then topwork as you get enough branch structure. You will then be able to test fruit to see what you like or not within 3 years of grafting. My crabapple is now up to 65+ different apples grafted to it.

1. Glad you don't want grass in your city lot. Agreed, it is a mosquito magnet, and mosquitos are getting worse and worse because of the warm winters we have been having. 2. I really like your bricks and would not pave over them. You just need a good vision that will tie together a new fence, the bricks and your three large sides of beds. 3. Regarding your bilco doors to the basement, it brings up a question about the whole back of your house. There is a lot of mismatched after though happening. You need to think about the new awning and how you will repair the wall that is the base of your porch. Once the back of your house has more of a "look" to it, you can paint your bilco doors to become part of that scheme. Obviously the setting of the houses below are quite different than yours but they both match the doors to the look of the house and they have planting nearby. Perhaps you want to flank the left side of your basement doors with a planter so there is greenery on one side and steps on the other. I'm obsessed with city back yards and find lots of inspiration just doing a google image search for "Brooklyn backyard ideas". Good luck. It is a wonderful space.