I've always wanted a tree there but we never made any progress toward it because Garrett didn't want my first choice, a monkey puzzle. They do grow quite tall and we already have five very tall trees in front on the other side, so that makes sense.
We made progress when I decided to write about the Everett Street Tree program. The city will come to your property, mark the location where a tree could go if any of the right of way is appropriate, and bring and plant a free tree if you like. The website isn't very easy to understand, so part of my research included simply applying for the program. The steep part of our front yard qualified, but we didn't move forward with the program because the tree wound end up being really close to the retaining wall the holds up the front of yard.
So finally I suggested just asking our yard service to bring a tree and plant it.
Then the holidays happened, after which we lost about a week to the snow. They finally came today for a mow and to remove some vines we wanted to get rid of, plus the canopy we had up in the back yard that was destroyed by the weight of the snow that built up on it. And they planted the tree!
Not much to look at now, but it's a young red lace leaf Japanese Maple. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing how fast it grows over the next few years.