Just know that you are not alone... we had a magnificent row of white pines (on our property but overhanging the street) butchered by a town employee, riding in the bucket of a front-end loader with a chainsaw. As they raised the bucket, crawling down my curb, he cut a line straight up to about 12 feet. All to accommodate the snowplow, which had not in all the previous years ever bothered to plow all the way to the curb anyway, but which all of a sudden was (so we were told) "endangered" by the white pine branches (I personally have never met a white pine branch that was any match for a multi-ton snowplow, but there you are...) Needless to say, this resulted in many letters, many complaints, intervention by the first selectman and a reprimand for the "nonprofessional" "pruning" by the town. The reprimand must have REALLY ticked off the Public Works director, because next thing I knew (literally -- 8 am the VERY next DAY!), he sics the power company on my trees. Says his crew saw "plain evidence of arc-ing" (which if true, would be dangerous, I agree): of course, the power company themselves had "pruned" (i.e., topped!) the trees less than a year before. Pure retribution as far as I could tell! One more tree story: In that same line of trees lining the street (and forming, when we bought our house, a virtually solid privacy wall!) was a magnificent elm. A real, American elm. We spent a fortune injecting it to protect it against Dutch elm disease, and it was flourishing (not necessarily because of that, of course, since we subsequently learned that there was significant question about the merit of such treatments. Nonetheless, we did them and they weren't cheap!) Then the power company's tree guy came to the door on one of their many visits to butcher (ooops, "prune") the white pines, to ask my permission, as they must. I said (reluctantly) okay, but prune as lightly as possible and leave the elm alone (since I didn't think any of its branches were impacting power lines and I didn't want any unnecessary pruning of this beautiful specimen). We walked out together, he agreed with me, and told (while I stood there) the crew to leave it alone. I looked at about two hours later to see them lifting the bucket up to the elm. I RACED down the drive, planted myself at the base of their truck, and shouted up to the guy in the bucket: "SORRY GUYS -- You're DONE here!" (Further discussion ensued, of course, but in the end, they left, grumbling about "people like you, lady...") And as for line-of-sight, don't even ASK about my magnificent forsythia that the town wanted to remove. Even when a police officer came by and agreed it did not impede line of sight, they still sent someone out to "prune" it back. So a lovely old fountain of gold that never bothered anyone was turned in five minutes into a round little gumdrop. The public works guy -- when I confronted him in tears -- said "gee, lady, it looks MUCH better don't you think??" -- to which I (sobbing) said "take it OUT! if you're going to do that to it!!" (To which HE said "I can't take it out, I'm not authorized to do that..." Your tax dollars at work... Which is all just to say that I SO feel your pain! The irony is that two years after we moved from that house, a former neighbor told me that ALL those big white pines (which DID lose branches like mad every storm!!) had been taken out by the town! The reason: the roots were growing into the sewer lines in the street. Thank goodness I wasn't still living there -- they'd have had to lock me up for the duration! Final bizarre note: After the front-end loader butchering incident, the town offered, in response to my squawks, to "underplant" the trees they had butchered the lower 10 feet of, to try to fill in and restore some of our privacy. So in their infinite wisdom, what do they suggest they are willing to plant UNDER these troublesome white pines that are apparently destroying their snowplows? WHITE PINE SEEDLINGS!!!!!

Wow, that's a lot of plants! I don't have a list of what I'm growing in my little gardens -- sometimes it takes me a couple of weeks in the spring to realize that that weird looking weed in the corner is something I've had for years. I just assume that more plants than not will grow in this area! One of the more unusual plants I grow is agapanthus. Not a particularly hardy variety, this was simply a florists' plant my mother gave me four years ago. But it's come up reliably every year for the past three seasons in Central Ohio. It's planted against a south-facing brick wall with excellent drainage, and apparently doesn't realize it's not in zone 8+ anymore! One of my mother's more spectacular plants is a 15 year old calamondin orange that arrived as a little "get-well" houseplant. It spends the winter on the unheated glassed in back porch in Cincinnati, and now stands over 6' tall in the pot, and is nearly 4' around. It always has flowers and fruit on it, and we've picked 200 ripe fruits at one time.

Your heart is in the right place -- and believe me I'm all for shade too! I live in hot California ;-) It might be helpful to the forum if you could draw a scale diagram of the layout that is currently in place. Show your house, the front and back, orient it so N faces the top, and indicate where you currently have trees or beds, and the approximate plant size at maturity. Then indicate what your goals are: reduced or simplified mowing, year-round shade, hummingbirds (and a butterfly garden, maybe for Monarchs?)...whatever else you hope to achieve. Right now the other thing I notice is that your shrubs are planted too close to the house. What is their size at maturity? They will need space to spread out on all sides or they will not look good in the future. Don't go and dig everything out yet, and don't belittle your work...you have done a massive amount of labor at this point. Try to keep an open mind with the advice you receive here, if you try to be receptive and not defensive the people on this forum often come up with amazing ideas!

I'm a half hour north of Denver. I've killed Thunderhead, several densifloras and bristlecones. What I'm having better luck with are mugos and sylvestris. Mops and Carsten's are doing fine, although Mops is in mostly shade and Carstens in full sun has burned a bit. I have a sylvestris Albyn's that's taken the drought and bomb cyclone (silly name for a big blizzard) just fine. One that has really surprised me is tsuga canadensis 'Jervis'. It's getting about 3 hours morning sun and some wind protection. It's had some tip dieback, but done pretty well. I thought that one would just curl up and die! I bought tsuga canadensis 'Abbott's Pygmy' to try this year, along with some chamaecyparis obtusa, Nana, Thoweil, Fernspray Gold and a pisifera 'Tsukumo' sawara cypress. These are all going in the same bed with morning sun and afternoon shade. I'm not sure where in the state you are and it sounds like you're planting in a full sun area. A lot of conifers here benefit from afternoon shading and I'll admit to using lawn chairs for that purpose their first year. I second whaas's comment on protecting from winter sun here for the first year or 2. I think a chamaecyparis or hinoki will just fry here in full sun. How do you feel about pinon and monophylla? Blue Jazz, Tiny Taylor and a few others should take full sun. Pinus mugo 'Big Tuna' or Tannenbaum might work for you, too.