Which should I choose?

The electric company has a list of trees it recommends for planting near power lines. I have a good incentive to pick one from their list because if I buy one from a certain local nursery, we get a discount. So, here's the list.

Beech, weeping purple
Cherry, flowering
Columnar Spruce
Dogwood
Dwarf Plum
Galaxy Magnolia
Globe Maple
Goldenchain Tree
Halesia
Hinoki Cypress
Japanese Maple
Japanese Snowball
Lilac
Photinia
Redbud
Rhododendron
Royal Galaxy Magnolia
Smoke Tree, purple
Snowball Bush
Stewartia
Weeping Hornbeam
Weeping Spruce

A few are out of the running right off the bat. We already have too many rhododendrons. We also have a couple lilacs; they're nice but I'd like a real tree, and lilacs just seem like a bush to me. We already have two cherry trees. And the plum is out for sure. Too messy!

I think my favorite without researching them is the dogwood. I've always loved them, and by the looks of the trees around the neighborhood, they do really well here. But I still want to explore our other options.

Plum tree

We had our plum tree cut down this week. It was growing into the power lines and was a very messy tree, so we asked the electric company to take it down.

Here are before and after pictures.





Obviously, it's very sunny in our backyard now. My job now is to pick a tree or trees to replace it so we can have some shade again.