If you want a small tree, you can train them to be small trees. If you want them to form a tall screen, they'll do that. If you want to maintain them as small shrubs, you can do that. Wax myrtles fit that bill perfectly, because they are so malleable: they can be trimmed any which way you want. Several homeowners have expressed their frustration to me because they feel they don't know what type of trees or shrubs would actually FIT into their tiny back yards and still provide some privacy while not overwhelming the space. Sort of like basil.īut don't take MY word for it - go to the second paragraph down in Houston landscape guru Randy Lemmon's list of "Ten Most Underutilized Landscape Shrubs" and read what he has to say about it. Number one on my list of recommendations is Texas Wax Myrtle. So what I'll do now is begin my originally-intended series of posts to describe landscape plants that I feel are most suitable for a neighborhood like Centerpointe. Good landscaping is extremely cheap if you're smart about how you obtain it and grow it. I'm here to dispel that kind of conclusion. You might want to argue that Victory Lakes is a higher price point neighborhood and that's the reason for the difference. Small but well-established trees and bushes adding privacy, that kind of thing. There's STUFF in many of their back yards. But what you do see is homeowners making an effort. It is also a newer subdivision, so naturally there are no huge trees there yet. Look at nearby Victory Lakes the next time you drive down West Walker Street, for instance. Did I see the same absolute lack of vegetation in other subdivisions? No. I was a house-shopper at that time, looking at many different neighborhoods. That description may seem very harsh, but I wanted to be totally honest about how I felt it compared to other options. This is a screengrab from that post, comparing the rows of houses looking at each other to rows of prisoner cells looking at each other. I even compared my first impression to Alcatraz! My first impression was that Centerpointe was perhaps the kind of subdivision where people throw up tract homes and then fail to incrementally improve them, which is the kiss of death for real estate values. Those first impressions weren't very favorable because of the utter lack of vegetation visible even in sections of the neighborhood that are several years old now. In a posting last September, I described my first impressions of Centerpointe, from back when my husband and I were searching all over Clear Lake for a home. Update April 27, 2013: See also this subsequent post regarding the management of wax myrtle trimmings.
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