Look at Hydrangea paniculata/panicled hydrangea (Limelight is one, and most can be pruned to tree form or be bushes of varying sizes), Hydrangea quercifolia/oakleaf hydrangea, and Hydrangea arborescens (of which the listed Annabelle is one). None have blue flowers; they are cream to white and some will age to pink or green. If you can't tolerate sometimes not getting blooms on the Hydrangeas, don't plant any Hydrangea macrophylla/bigleaf hydrangea such as Endless Summer or Nikko blue. If you want blue flowers you need to be tolerant of no flowers upon occasion or protect them from late spring frosts after the buds have started swelling.

You have to remember that woody plants are living things that keep growing, though they may slow down. Fast growing plants = more trimming if you want them pruned to size and tidiness, so your neatly trimmed boxwoods won't stay neat for long if they are fast growing, and finding someone to do a really good job with pruning can be difficult.

I don't know anything about the other plants listed, but without more information, it is difficult to comment regardless because we know nothing about space available both on the ground and overhead, what is already there, what are conditions of light and shade, soil type (texture and pH).

Cherry laurels (or English laurel/Skip laurel) are excellent privacy shrubs. And moderately fast growing. Viburnum awabuki 'Chindo' is another good screening choice.

If you want boxwood then you have to be patient - NO boxwood grows fast.

Zone 7b should be fine for the flowering of any bigleaf hydrangea (ES, Nikko) most of the time but they may be affected by the occasional overly cold winter or a late spring frost. Both will get far larger than 2' in time.......did the previous ones get pruned each year?

Knockouts come in other colors than red - you could pick pink, a double pink, coral, white or yellow.

Other evergreen flowering shrubs that could be included are azaleas, abelia, pieris and daphne. Also lots of deciduous flowering shrubs if you can tolerate something other than evergreens - clethra, itea, deutzia, weigela, fothergilla, hardy hibiscus (Rose of Sharon).

Fast growing trees grow big - that's kind of the way things work :-) But if you can be a bit patient, a flowering dogwood or a Japanese maple are excellent smaller sized shade trees. For something larger and faster growing, a lacebark elm is a nice choice....so is the zelkova

And if you want peonies, tell your landscaper to include peonies on the list.....it is really just that simple.

If you occasionally get ice storms or heavy wet snow, I wouldn't recommend lacebark elm based on what I saw with row of them I saw last week. We had 10" of wet snow and the twiggy branch structure caught so much snow that branches and smaller trunks snapped right off. I haven't seen that type of really severe damage onJapanese maples, Zelkova, or dogwoods. The rest of GG48's suggestions are good as are Lacebark elms if you don't get ice and heavy snow.

Garden Gal yes the Endless Summer were pruned back each fall. Are they not supposed to be?

we had Dogwood at our last house too and in 11 years they grew maybe a foot.

Our lot isnt large. We are downsizing. The front will have full sun practically all day and the back and side yards will have partial sun to shade. Large trees One to two on the side of our driveway and one in the back yard. Our lot slopes down past our fence in the back so about three of some type of large tree will be on a slope. The ones near the Drive we will have to be sure don’t have an invasive root system.

So overall what I’m hearing is his recommendations are good?

Well, they are not "bad" :-)) Could just use some fluffing or additions that address your specific wants (he did some but not all). Can't tell you why your previous dogwood didn't get larger...they are native to your area and should get somewhere around 15-25', depending on variety.

And the only pruning that should be done on any bigleaf hydrangea is the removal of any dead wood in late spring after they leaf out. Otherwise you WILL compromise the bloom cycle and the plant will remain short and stubby.

Spring pruning of bigleaf hydrangeas cuts off the flower buds that formed the previous summer. So choose varieties that will stay the size you want in that spot.

Well then i guess our Gardner just butchered our Endless Summer :(. The blooms on them when they bloomed were beautiful. The colors vibrant . I guess they were just murdered!

Wow Doug! I'm always amazed at your capacity to go over and above for everyone on this board! You rock! Thank you! I will be spending my afternoon looking up each of these and seeing what they look like! Perfect project for me today since its cold, rainy and possibly icy and snow this afternoon!

I went over your list Doug and I really think it is going to be hard to pick and choose! The yard is small! I posted it on my other post. I know I won't be able to fit everything in. I did find some inspiration pictures on here I just loved the border beds in.

Also my husband is over the pine straw and the mulch and wants to do a ground cover in our beds. I was thinking hostas could cover around trees but not sure about flower and bushes. I looked up several. Any recommendations for that?

I love these.

If you post another pic of the area in question, I can give you some ideas based on your inspiration photos.

Absolutely won’t say no to that! Thank you! Very difficult to get pictures as the site is so torn up leaving no where to stand but.......

and last.....don’t laugh my little sketch of some ideas . We want to do blue stone pavers. Have an outdoor grill island. A pergola sitting area and outdoor fireplace. We are thinking of widening our driveway by adding pavers to the sides as well. I’m embarrassed to even share this as i have no idea what I’m doing ;/

some ideas which you can personalize with your favorites:

Thank you that looks so nice!

Pink_peony, in your plan view, you appear to have a lot of pavement with only very narrow garden beds. For instance, if the side yard on the left is between about 12' and 16' wide (basing my guess on the 8' setback line) your beds aren't much deeper than a couple of feet, which isn't really deep enough for most plants. Will you be using this area as an outdoor sitting area? I would be more likely to make some wider areas of garden bed to frame the sitting area and allow for at least some larger plants. Or alternatively, run the paving up to the building and put all the planting space along the property line. You can always put some large pots of annuals in groups along the house for seasonal color.

if you want the layered look in your inspiration photos, you will need deep enough beds to accomplish that.

NH Babs my little drawing i did is by no means to scale. I doubt the walk way on the left will probably be no wider than 36-40”. I originally told the landscape architect to put the walk way against the house leaving larger planting beds against the black aluminium fencing we will have and he balked at that idea. He said it would look much nicer to have a bed on either side. He said the exposed concreted crawl space foundation will look nicer with shrubs in front of it. When he explained it that way it made sense to us. He proposed doing three free standing trellis features with a climbing flower vine on each. and tidy boxwood hedge in between those. There are only three small windows on that side of the house on the bottom level. so it’s mainly just a large expanse of siding. This was all verbal of course. We haven’t gotten any plans back from him yet. This is why I’m here though. Trying to get as much feed back and info as we can so we can be prepared and educated on plants and ideas as to work on this until we get it right. Our last home the architect drew it up based on what we said. We signed off and in the end we were never quite happy with what we got in comparison to the vision in my head. However i can’t blame them as we were not educated enough and prepared enough to make different suggestions or push back when we didn’t agree with them. We had a large lot with a whole lot of plants that made no sense. A huge amount of stamped concrete and we only used a small portion of it etc. We spent a ridiculous amount of money on something that we could never really bring to fruition. Hoping with a lot of research to avoid that this time around!

Following me educating myself.....how large should the beds be?

You have several wants that are contradictory. At some point you have to make some choices. For example, if you want lush, full beds that always have something in bloom, you are looking at large beds that require a fair amount of maintenance. Most flowering plants, like peonies, bloom for a fairly short amount of time.

The general impression I am getting is that you want a type of garden that is going to require a *lot* of maintenance. While finding a competent lawn dude isn't that hard, finding competent, affordable garden help is notoriously difficult. A good garden design should be able to help you thread the needle between the garden you want, and the garden you are willing to maintain, but it is going to require some compromises.

pink_peony

After viewing your posted pictures may I suggest that you work with your LA to plan and install all the considerable hardscape you envision first. This is a small property with close neighbors. Privacy should be a main consideration. From that point your growing zone allows an interesting selection of plants to meet your desires. Hardscape first. Take a deep breath. Study. Visit nurseries. Give yourself some education time. I strongly suggest locating the book "Landscape Plants of the Southeast" by Halfacre and Shawcroft. Should be available in area bookstores and libraries. A wealth of knowledge to thumb through and study. More thoughts later when we can see the final hardscape plan your LA draws for you.

"How large should the beds be?" That depends on what plants you want in them, and the amount of work you want to have to do to keep them in good shape, but all the ones in your inspiration photos are at least 6' and could be as deep as 12' or more. As mad_gallica said, more flowering perennials tends to be more work, so if you don't want to be spending time in the garden, choose long blooming plants like the hydrangeas and foliage plants and groundcovers as in your second inspiration photo. You will still need someone competent to maintain the garden, either yourself or someone else to keep it weeded, mulched until groundcovers fill in, deadheaded for any flowering plants, and so on.

Oh for sure we are going to have to "weed" out a lot. Pun intended! There is no possible way all of this can fit on such a small lot. We have also got to have two very different types for front and back as one is full sun and one shade. We won't be in the home until June and we would like the work to begin as soon as possible after. That means the hardscape will be going in soon as I don't know if too many things that should be planted in the heat of summer. We assume next will be our trees and shrubs in early fall. Flowering varieties? Spring? So I think because of the timing we will be able to live with the hardscape through summer and get a feel for things. Hopefully. All that said I need a place to start so im not completely blind going into it.