Whatever you do never plant a gum! They have no place in suburban areas! The sooner the council realises that these trees kill people the better! We have had two gum trees fall on the back of our house now, one in 2012 and one in 2014. We are so lucky that myself, my husband, three children, three dogs, five Guinea pigs, two parrots and one bearded dragon were not injured. It's just a miracle not once but twice! I still don't know how we escaped unharmed. The gums do not have a stable root system and they grow very shallow, they get to the point where they just fall over. And the scary thing is they fall silently. They are not called 'Widow Makers' in the bush for no reason. I like the Tuckeroo tree, not sure of scientific name. They grow with a straight trunk and keep their foliage in a straight and symmetrical line along the bottom and grow hiding their branches. Essentially they look like a large mushroom. They are green all year too. I think they get to about 6 metre or ten if they have to reach for the sun.

I bought this "rubber tree" at Home Depot years ago. At least I think it's what we call a Rubber Tree. It's been growing tall but can't support its weight. One summer I brought it outside where the wind strengthened the main stem enough to keep it strong. The next summer it was too tall to ever support itself no matter how much I tried to strengthen the main stem. I topped it to keep it from growing taller until it got a stronger stem. This is actually two trees next to each other. I wound the together hoping that would help. Neither of them are branching out, only growing taller. Ideally I want this to grow tall and then bushy on the top. My home is 62 (F) at night and 68 (F) at day. We have lower humidity in Colorado. It has plenty of light and the window is west facing with south windows as well. I used Gritty Mix, with Foliage Pro fertilizer and water once a week. In the photo it's leaning against the wall to keep from bending over, otherwise it can't support its weight. Any ideas? Thank you!

‘Nana’ is a fabulous tree, my favourite.

we've had great success stabalising wet banks and creating windbreaks with a range of casuarinas that are also fast growing and evergreen but don't block sunlight to grass growing under the trees and are happy in our very cold winter and hot summers...we collect seed and grow our own or you could buy tube stock that are much cheaper, quicker and easier to plant when you need more than a few trees and over a relatively few years.... the small plants are more successful than starting with big trees when they have to look after themselves in a paddock although we use staked tree sleeves and mulch to help protect the small trees while they become established...consider planting local varieties of casuarina and the ficus in multiple staggered rows as a thick hedge and add the deciduous trees for colour