What is your geographical Location? Judging by the palm it’s somewhere warm.

lol on the person on the driveway ...

do not plant a tree at the corner of the driveway.. unless you spend a lot of money to buy a tree already big enough.. that it doesnt block you street view while backing out of the dirveway ... neighbors get a bit huffy when you mow down a kid ...

some of your thoughts may never get big enough to prune them to height for the above reason ...

otherwise.. this MI boy has no clue what to recommend where palms grow ...

big city name plz ...

ken

IMO you can get som e shade by installing dolar shades on the windows that will also allow you to enjoy the view. Add some nice plantings along the walkway and please remove the shutters that make no sense on those windows

Sorry for not mentioning earlier, we live in northern California - USDA hardiness zone 9b.

I like the idea of a coral bark or bloodgood. We have both and they do nicely in filtered light under oak trees. We're in SoCal where there's a problem with river birches due to birch borers. Most river birch you see around here are either dead or on their way to it.

Do consider that you are going to be waiting a long time for a 6' tree planted even as close as the center of one of your lawns to provide any significant amount of screening or shading of the house.

But which particular window are you thinking about? A tree lined up just right with one of them and planted close enough could provide an adequate level of screening pretty quickly - maybe even immediately if of the right size and shape. With it also casting a moving shadow over part of the house some day.

Otherwise you could block the street with solid fencing and/or hedging/screening plantings consisting of or including dense shrubby kinds.

Usually river birch is not affected by bronze birch borer, with up here anyway it being the European, Himalayan and paper birches that are being hit now that the pest has come this far west. For instance the next door neighbors to a friend that lived near Seattle had two cut leaf weeping European birches and one river birch in their back yard. When the borer came to their neighborhood the European birches were being drilling out and dropping branches on his side of the fence in no time. Luckily the neighbors were quick to have these cut down.

Providing in addition a much better view of the river birch, which as of the last time I was on the friend's property was still standing there looking intact.

I would get a crape myrtle. They are absolutely beautiful and supposedly do great in California.

Dynamite Red Crape Myrtle Trees for Sale – FastGrowingTrees.com · More Info

Very cute house. I would get a good nursery to confirm but I think a medium growth tree would be lovely in your yard. This is a Chinese Pistasche tree. A slightly raised bed about 10’ from sidewalk in front yard coupled with flowering plants for color would set off yard nicely. Your fencing needs either power washing and stain or painting. I am wondering if this gate goes to front door? If soI would create cottage welcome with something like this arched arbor gate and white fencing.

This is not a fast growing tree. I put one in our back yard along with a weeping willow about 30’ away or so. I wanted some quick shade but knew I didn’t want the weeping willow beyond around 5-7 years. It grew very fast and gave our courtyard Asian garden a beautiful look. The Pistache was slow but in second year began developing a beautiful branch structure which I pruned to help expose that a bit. The birds were drawn to it and we had many cardinals raise their babies in it. Fun to watch. These pictures show a very mature tree. Once ours got to about 20’ high and had a nice shape we thought we should cut down the weeping willow. But, a career move came along and as far as I know both trees are still there. That was a long time ago but last time I was by there both trees were thriving and looked beautiful. Just keep location of your sewer line in mind when you place tree and other utilities as well as sprinkler lines etc.

I like pergolas for situations like yours...this more directly and quickly addresses the problem ...they can be supplemented with shade cloth until you can get full coverage growth from a vine like wisteria...it looks like a pergola could wrap around to cover the area behind the fence as well...the advantage to vines is if they drop their leaves in winter the sun gets in when you want it ...and they give shade in the summer...