[Judith Ann]

I just thought I'd pass on a few things we learned the hard way. When we bought our home, it was two years old. We put in 7 palm trees, almost all new plantings, landscaping walls in the front yard, and borders around all plantings in the back. Four years later, we found ourselves having quite a number of the plantings in the front of the house taken out. There were two reasons. First, we had a number of those plants with the blue or white flowers...plumbago? They can be pretty, but they grow so, so fast and don't look neat unless they are trimmed every couple of weeks. They are fine in the backyard, but not in the front where we want a more "perfect" look. We would caution anyone from planting them. Second, we all know that new plantings look small, but things do grow fast here. So, before you know it, things get too big even with constant trimming. Therefore, we would recommend caution about over planting. Less is more.
For what it is worth, that is what we learned. Our yard looks lovely now!