First, go to more established neighborhoods and see what they have. If you find something you like, take a picture and we can identify it.

Second, find a good, locally owned garden center and ask them to help you choose plants.

Third, go to big box stores and see what they have in stock every season. That way, you can see what is evergreen and cold-hardy. A word of warning, a lot of things that are normally cold hardy are not if the temps go too low for too long. I lost a few supposedly cold-hardy plants in SW FL when we had temps in the low 20s for three nights running.

You're asking a lot, like almost for a plan for your entire yard. You need to do a little legwork, then come back and show us plants you like and we'll advise you if they're suitable.

I would like to recommend rain lilies for your layer 3

Thanks Glenn

Your house is beautiful! I love the colors. Congratulations!

Japanese ilex might work well for your first layer. We had them in front of our house in NC. They are dense, took pruning/shearing very well. They need good drainage.

Some varieties of roses stay pretty short and have flush after flush of flowers. Those might be nice for your second layer and provide some color.

For the third layer, I think you might get cold enough there for Candytuft. It is evergreen and you get one and usually two flushes of pretty little, white flowers. This is one of my favorite plants. If not, I would use either Liriope or colorful vincas. They may even over winter for you if you have a mild winter.

Dirty gardener, I certainly don't want to be disrespectful, but I have done that. It's all the same plants and I'm sure there is probably good reason for that. I didn't necessarily want viburnum for a foundation plant, but that may be what ends up going in given its hardiness and how dense they can stay. I have read that viburnum suspensem can be maintained as low as 3ft tall, but I don't know that for certain as I don't have any experience with it. The second layer might prove to be the most challenging as I'm not sure what plants meet the criteria I'm looking for. We have some drift roses in our yard that do provide lots of blooms, but they look a little scraggly in my opinion.

AW - free advice from home gardeners is the wrong path to a proper landscape. There are plenty of trained, certified Landscape Designers and Landscape Architects in your area. Avail yourself of their services. Many will come out for a very reasonable fee and give you a rough estimate. Anyone here who suggests specific plants may have good intentions, but for the amount of questions you've asked and the size of the project, you need a professional.

I agree with fawnridge. For years I tried to get advice from friends and looked at nurserys and big box stores. I finally decided on a native landscape company and I'm very happy with the result; everything is native and looks wonderful. It was a little pricy in the beginning but will last a very long time.

AW, no offense taken. I always shoot from the hip, so sometimes I'm afraid I'm going to offend people, but I feel like people would rather have the truth than follow a suggestion and be unhappy with it. I understand not being able to hire professional designers, though. I suggest not trying to do it all at once. Just make it a 5-year project and do each section as you find something you like. That's what most of us do. It's certainly more fun and less stressful.

When I moved into my house in SW FL, it looked a lot like yours. Some idiot had put baby arborvitae as foundation plants. Those suckers get 20 feet tall and almost as wide! I left them for two years, until they got to the bottom of the windows, then snatched them out and replaced them. They did make cute little Christmas trees those first two years when I used to do outdoor lights, but the coonties I replaced them wth were much nicer.

Have you considered coonties, BTW? They are natve, so very easy-care and don't get too large. They are planted in abundance up here in N. FL, and everyone loves them.

I have a few landscapers coming out this week (which for the record we were planning to use all along, we just wanted to have some ideas going into it). We have visited several local nurseries and garden centers to get some ideas, but we are stuck on one thing. I'm trying to find a smaller tree that can be planted close to the house/driveway and not too far from the property line. I would prefer a tree or at least something that is already trained into a tree and ideally something that had flowers. I thought about a crepe myrtle, but I was told by one garden center that the dwarf/semi dwarf varieties (pink velour was on the mind) don't do well here and the biggest he could get me was a 3 gallon. I don't love ligustrums or bottle brushes so I've pretty much ruled those out. I also don't want anything to tropical looking. Any ideas on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

If I could grow a dogwood in my zone I would in a heart beat!

Oh I was looking at flowering almonds online and they are gorgeous.

Cherry trees, especially Thai Cherry trees are so pretty. My mom has a TC in her front yard. It's in bloom right now.

All three of those ideas look great, but the dogwood would still be too big and I don't think either of the other two options would grow well in my zone unfortunately

I hope you update us with what ideas the landscapers give ya and what you end up going with!

You could always go with a a peach tree they have a nice bloom and you would get peaches too. Any thing from UF would grow nice were you are. My fav is floridaprince it doesn't get very big. blooms early and the peaches are great.

What about a Juniper Spartan? They might get a little taller then what I was hoping for, but the shape and width seems pretty ideal for the space.

A W

When we moved to this house and had some plantings done already, we had so many problems and so did the neighbors. After 10 years, I see everyone constantly changing the plants for one reason or other. We face north but across the street face south and had the same cookie cutter landscaping.:) We had to deal with fungus, insects, too much sun, no sun,etc.

We almost took out everything but I think now is about 80% changed. I don't know much about landscaping in Florida that is the reason that I don't advice you.

It looks like to me that we had those juniper planted and got a blight of some sort, some neighbors are still fighting it, ours are out.

By the entrance, we took all the foundation plantings because of disease, not enough sun in winter, too much in summer. I planted 6 sweet olive instead, they are sparse, don't grow fast and smell nice, another layer is liriope and a groundcover, as an accent plant Lime Zinger.

I have seen a very nice dwarf azaleas, ours are probably not the best but at least they flower and are easy care.

This morning

Silvia

Silvia, it seems like you can relate then to the cookie cutter landscaping. I'm pretty set on what I'm going to do on the one side and crossing my fingers that it works out. As you can see from the picture above, the house being built next to us is slightly moved up in the lot so right out of our garage faces right into their patio. I wanted to find something to plant there that would help block the view. I have been looking all over the place and came across the Juniper Spartan. I'm not that knowledgeable with them, but I got the impression that they are a pretty hard plant (I could be wrong though). I'm certainly open to other ideas, but as you can see the space is limited and planting something that is dense, but also attractive to our eyes is ideal.

Spartan juniper is a nice evergreen. Very hard to kill. Good for privacy. I had 2 in Orlando they grew huge 40ft tall and 25ft wide but they were already there when i moved in so i don't know how old they were. That house was built in 56 so they could have been part of the landscaping from when it was built. I went by that house last year and they r still there and look fine. We never did anything for them never watered or fertilized them.

A W

I hope that you are successful picking your plants, sometimes is a gamble.:)

That Juniper Spartan looks nice, I really don't know if it is the same that was planted here.

Here are two looking pines like the ones we had with the blight across the street, mine are out.

On the right side of the house I have this holly and is well behaved

On the left side I have this other one, I don't know the name and is also well behaved.

On the side of the neighbor, I have this thyrallys, took a beating with the winds and rains we had, so it is not looking too pretty but is easy to care and have no problems.

Silvia

Silvia,the trees in the first pic.i think they r Italian cypress.i cant tell in the pic r they a blue green color?

Glenn, that is what I originally thought but they look similar to the Juniper Spartan, if they are not that is good! because from the trees like the ones in the first pic all got some kind of blight and after been sprayed for a few years, mine are out and other neighbors are out too.

Anyway, every person has an idea of the ideal landscape they want. mine is a xeriscape in the front yard same like I had in Arizona, no grass, succulents and a palo verde tree for accent. I guess that is not what I will get at my present home.:)

Silvia

Thanks. Silvia.I have seen that blight its all over Melbourne killing a lot of trees. My perfect land scape is a mix between a natural but a little bit unordered and a food forest. What I'm going to end up with are beds running down the fence and around the house and a orchard. I guess thats close so it will do.

A very interesting tree that doesn't take up a lot of room is a goldenspire ginkgo

Glenn, sounds like a good plan. I always had the oasis/food forest in the backyard and in this house is no different. First thing that I did when I moved here is take out 2 maples in the back and planted an avocado which is so big now, and made raised beds for vegetables. I am always well supplied with fruits and vegetables!

Silvia

I love sweet olive. There is a dwarf variety. It's not the prettiest shrub, IMO, but you can't beat the scent and it does block neighbors.

please let us know how your meeting with the landscapers went and update with pictures.

Inquiring minds want to know.

We are going to go with Westringia Blue gem across the back, nandina firepower in the middle and some annuals up front. We are going to replace the holly tree with a crape myrtle and slide it to the front of the planter to give it some more room. We are still undecided for a tree on the smaller area and may just not put one over there.