When we bought our zone 6b house in NJ by the Hudson across from NYC there was open space around us. Two years ago they razed the forest behind us and put up behemoth townhouses and we freaked and bought a bunch of trees.

Now we're trying to figure out how to make it all work.

Basically we have a back row of trees - ornamental pear, large thujas, a maple, and a birch. They will get more than enough sun if we deal with the two thundercloud plums we planted as a 2nd level privacy defence.

What I'd like to do is to keep the plums pruned to keep them smaller, like I'm doing with the peach tree that I have next to the house - but I don't find anything online that says anything about that. I can see them growing all gnarly and cool over time and I'm very good about keeping up with required pruning - I just don't know if these trees can deal with it.

Any feedback would be appreciated.