Look before you leap, indeed. As to trees and shrubs, look at the books and think hard about your own garden's suitability, and above all, think of the view from your windows before you plant. Those fine Leylandii cypresses have already given the lawyers in England a fine outing, as neighbours complain of loss of light and what-not, when someone has innocently thought it a good idea to have a shield from the wind or the passing traffic. They are monsters. One poor fellow, after complaints from a neighbour, cut down a tree or two for the sake of peace, and then found himself in court for breaking local environmental laws: he was in a preservation area where not a brick could be removed without permission, and that applied also to trees. An ornamental, flowering cherry is a lovely thing, but one gardener found that the roots of a tree she had planted in her paved garden had run 15 yards across, and may have been the cause of disturbance to other plants on the way. Did not Dublin Corporation have to dig up many they had, to the delight of the local population, planted along some streets, because the roots were lifting up the pavements and threatening underground pipes? Then, people with small gardens who must have one tree, anyway, to lift their eyes and thoughts to. What better than birch - slender, sinuous, glowing? Agreed, but when it gets to about 40 feet your betula pendula Dalecarlica is not the pet you thought, especially beside a cedar; though the columnar pine keeps its promised slim shape.
One of the great surprises of shrub life is the propagating capacity of that lovely Leycesteria formosa, popularly known as the pheasant bush, and, indeed, in another place, pheasant droppings galore have been found around them. Himalayan honeysuckle is another name for them. The Royal Horticultural Society's encyclopaedia puts "that it bears pendant spikes" of four inches long, of white flowers among dark purple-red bracts. "These exotic flowers produce purple berries which are so popular with birds that stone walls in the area and even stone gate-pillars have to be watched for seeds deposited, which quickly become bushes, which could bring down the same walls.
This garden mentioned before, has a plant of five feet on top of a ten foot wall which stands over a greenhouse. It won't stand for long. Y