Looking from the front. Although small now, they grow to 8 to 10 feet (3 metres or so), which is a little bigger than I would have preferred. However, unlike English Laurel, they do not grow to be enormous trees! Even 10 feet would not be intolerable here.
The view from the back. The white objects hanging on the trees are the plants information tag, since removed.
Due to our low rain/snow fall last winter, we were asked to reduce water consumption by 10%. Since the biggest part of my water usage is to keep the grass green, I just didn't turn the lawn sprinklers on this year. I continued to water the gardens though, since the plants don't revive when the rains return. This is about as bad as it got, since we didn't have any really hot weather, and there were several wet days to keep things going. In fact, by mid September, we had saved enough water that there was more in the reservoirs than normal for that time of year!
The front street, where brown was beautiful. Note the green edges to my front lawn, which I think was just water from the gardens reaching the lawn.