My advice is to choose another tree. Ficus nitida are extremely frost sensitive. (Evidence of this is all over town; trees are dead or severely damaged with a lot of dead, unsightly branches sticking out of new green growth.) We had no winter to speak of this year, but a frost of the type we had a few years back and your ficus nitida will be toast. A lot were lost in the puny frost of the 2010 winter.

Understand your concern, but i'm in souther california. I have posted here after finding more response about this particular specimen than the california section.

Still don't think it's a good choice, but here you go for some info on planting: http://www.backyardgardener.com/plantname/pd_23df.html These are not bushes, but at maturity can be huge trees.

This link takes you to a very long and interesting discussion of ficus nitida (and a lot of other stuff, too). I commented a few times. I love this tree and had two in ground and two in containers. They are all dead and gone, killed by frosts in different years. :( I won't plant another one.

Here is a link that might be useful: Ficus discussion on GW