Make a to-scale drawing of the side if your house. Cut our paper bushes and place them along the drawing. Make different shapes - cones, rounds, vase shapes, U shapes. Use that drawing to determine which look you like best. If you decide to keep the existing plants, the drawing will tell you where to remove plants and where to leave them. Dig the ferns and pot them until you decide what to do. Pix 1-3 may be pittosporum. Pic 4 looks like Japanese privet. It also looked like crape Myrtle but I looked at the terminal bud on the limbs and decided it wasn't crape myrtle. Pic 6 looks like photinia. Gardenias reach a certain age and begin to "go down". Just prune it back almost to the ground, fertilize and it will recover. The last pix looks like 2 or 3 different azaleas = large, medium and small leaf varieties.

I can see that those are definitely Pittosporum (Dwarf), with those good close-up images. If you are willing to do a proper rejuvenation pruning on them, they respond beautifully to that procedure. Some people don't have the 'guts, lol. Rejuvenation pruning requires cutting the entire plant back to 6 inch stubs or less. That means all the way to the ground. Do it neatly and sharply; all you will need is a decent set of loppers for the job. The plants will make a terrific recovery this very first year, only they will be fuller and more compact.

Another method of getting them into shape requires pruning part of the plant back this year, part next year, and so on. I much prefer the 'all at once' technique. I'd avoid fertilizing anything that you cut all the way back to the ground for at least a year. There will be enough stored energy in those roots to support the plant through a huge burst of new growth that always follows that kind of pruning. If you fertilize, you'll force even more top growth on a plant. That could put your plants in some stress and risk for insect and disease problems.

Those Holly ferns would benefit enormously by a layer of mulch. Snip off any dead fronds from around the crown. I like Holly ferns. They simply do better in a shadier, moister environment than many other types of plants.

The next plant does look like a Red Tip Photinia, at least if that new growth is red. Sometimes, it is really helpful to see a close-up of the foliage. If it is Photinia, it is one more plant that does well when limbed UP to a tree form. They make far more attractive small trees than they do shrubs, I think. Limb it up, but don't make a big ball out of the top part.

That gardenia is covered with black sooty mold. That means that it is infested with whitefly, or another pest such as scale insect. In the warmer parts of the country where gardenias grow, whitefly is always the primary pest. You'll have to get rid of the insect before the black sooty mold will go away.

I don't see any problem with the gardenia other than that it's pruned to a box type shape. In the future, if you're going to hedge up shrubs, try to prune them so that the widest part of the plant is at the bottom, rather than the top. If the bottom branches stay shaded by the top, the plant will get thinner and thinner down there. The shape doesn't have to be so obvious that the plants look funny....just barely perceptibly wider at the bottom.

Yes, you have a small assortment of azaleas. I wouldn't prune them at all....but if you MUST be sure to wait until after they bloom...which won't be too long from now.

Be aware that when tsmith recommended cutting out a bunch of geometrical shapes, it was not intended to suggest that you prune your plants to those forms. Yikes. If you're thinking about trying that little exercise, you would also need to cut your shapes to the appropriate 'to scale' dimensions for the mature plant.

You have some nice plants, most of which need very little work to get them into good shape and you've made a good start. I'd just sit back and live with things for a long time before you start removing or moving too many things. Of course, any plant that is crowding doorways, walks, gates, etc., needs to be moved or put on the curb!

If you decide you want to plant some color at the base of an established tree, and that tree is important to your property in terms of value and shade, be sure that you don't disrupt the root system around that tree too much. No tilling, no major change of grade, etc. Actually, the single most beneficial thing you can add all around a tree (or any plant) is a 2 to 4 inch layer of mulch. Just don't pile any up against the trunks.

Impatiens is a nice annual for shadier spots. If you have sunny locations for annuals, select something that will thrive without the shade.

Have you seen any new growth on your cycads?

I agree with Terry and Rhizo. The plant in 4-5 looks like privet to me. If it is, you gotta get rid of it! Those things will take over if you let them. (Not quite as fast as kudzu, but a real pain.) They don't have a deep tap root and so are usually not hard to pull up when they're small. If they're too big to pull, I cut them all the way down and put a drop of undiluted Roundup on the fresh cut stump.

Well, had some free time today and decided to tackle the Pittosporum and Red Tip Photinia. As rhizo suggested I cut back the Pittosporum (Wheeler's Dwarf) to about 6 inches since they where getting a little out of control behind the house. Actually, I'm a little worried that I went overboard and cut them down too much, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see. The Red Tip Photinias look MUCH better now that they've been limbed up into tree form. Let me know what you guys think!
P.S. - no new growth on the cycads yet :-(

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bump and just wanted to say the cycads are starting to get green on top and sprout out!

Woohoo!! Glad to hear your sagos made it.

My one large sago that I have in the ground is probably about two to three weeks away from flushing, so I had little doubt that yours down in Montgomery would be ok, too.

Thanks for the update.

Just another quick follow-up...The pittosporum doesn't appear to have started coming back yet and I'm concerned that I may have cut them too far back by just leaving 4-6" of the root nubs. Did I kill them? :-(