The very first flora we planted right after moving in back in 2003 was 3 Junipers outside Phoebe’s bedroom window:
I viewed them as a security measure more than anything else, blocking access to the window and basement egress. We had an early hard freeze in 2013, that pretty much killed them. I say “pretty much” because they did survive just barely, but remained mostly brown for the next 3 years. I hoped they would eventually fully recover, but it wasn’t happening.
I started a somewhat related project in the spring of 2014 to install a sump in the egress window well. We’d always been getting water in there for some reason, I assumed just because the soil here is sandy and drains really well. So I did a little digging on-and-off over the next 2 years, not really in any hurry. Little did I know, the Juniper project would finally reveal exactly why water was going in there and rusting the window well shell.
The problem became quite clear after pulling the Juniper stumps. Some fool builder decided to back-fill around the window with landscape rock! Not completely, but enough to make a negative grade down almost 2 feet on 1 side. So I had to dig out about 500lbs. of rock and properly back-fill the thing with soil. Despite not really needing it anymore, the sump project finally got completed in conjunction with a new flower bed containing 2 rose bushes for starters.
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The window well is still not actually quite complete. It needs a cover, which is going to be another custom DIY. I also have to get around to cleaning up and painting over that rust one of these days as well…