Tree form Japanese Ligustrum recurvifolia :

Trained Wisteria Standard:

The only reason i was thinking small trees is i think they look good with uplighting and provide some privacy as we have a lot of open windows adjacent to that fence line. Maybe tree are not the best idea?

Poncirus "Flying Dragon" looks great backlit.

Something more along the lines of a large shrub limbed up or trained into a tree form as in Doug's mock up would work better than an actual tree, which has the potential to get much larger and provide more shade than you want. And a 2' wide planting bed doesn't allow much room for something to grow large.....barely sufficient to accommmodate a tree-form shrub!

i just realized dougs pics are a mock up on my original pic, pretty cool. Ok looks like shrub trained into a tree is the way to go. any other recommendations on which shrubs, and how to train them into a tree form would be great...thanks!

I was gonna say that your inspiration pictures are showing all new, young plants, and see that Gardengal has already mentioned it. It's not going to work out squeezing them into a 2' beds. 6' deep bed would be more reasonable, but in no case less than 4' deep. If you have less, everything growing at ground level will be growing out of the bed and you'll have to keep constantly hacking at it. Also, you don't want the tree form to be leaning over onto the lawn before its canopy begins ... unless you want to be clocked in the head every time you mow the lawn.

I'm in 9A, too. Some of the plants I'm using as small tree forms are variegated Pittosporum, crape myrtle (sizes vary considerably), Bougainvillea (large and requires external support), Vitex (rangey growth is difficult to shape), and Japanese Ligustrum (also large ... lots of trimming). Others that would work include Glossy Abelia, non-dwarf Indian Hawthorn, non-dwarf Lorapetalum, and some plants that are used for hedges, such as Viburnums. For more examples, look around where you live and see what people are using for small tree forms.

For summing up how to grow, first decide how many trunks you wish the trees to have. I think there's nothing homelier than a two-trunk small tree. I like lots of trunks so that the end result looks like it could be a bouquet. Maybe a dozen would be a minimum for me. For you it might be 1/2 dozen. It's your call. If I don't have enough trunks, I just cut the shrub to the ground (6") once in spring and let it regrow with more, which is more or less a doubling and trunk arranging process. Then keep the shrub trimmed in the shape of a sugar cone, where the angle of the sides is what you want the trunk structure to be when the tree is mature. Do not worry about there being foliage in the trunk area while it is young. Once the tree reaches the point where the canopy would begin (above your fence) then you can start removing foliage & side branches up to 50% of the plant's total height. You'll do this every year in the early Spring as the tree grows. (As it reaches double the height of the fence, eventually, you will have cleared out all foliage that is below the top of the fence.)