Welcome, Musicalgardener! I've been waiting to see if anyone knew about this plant. Probably you are in the minority here, being in west texas.

I think what you should do is test this plant for the rest of us! Plant it and give us your review. It sounds like you've done good research. Maybe you could change the landscaping trends in your area.

OK...I HAVE had sand cherries and they were wonderful. However, at the time, I lived in Montana! One of the advantages to having a DH that gets transferred around a lot is that I've had a lot of different plants in different environments, albeit for not very long.

The area of MT I lived in was zone 4, probably 4a. We could have sub-zero temps and the next day it could be 50. It was very windy all the time and quite dry as we were on the east side of the Rockies. There were normally 2 weeks in summer with 90+ degree heat.

The sand cherries I had were planted in full sun, flowered beautifully in spring and grew maybe 1-2' in the first year. I don't know if they could be limbed up. I believe they kept their leaves during the growing season. We had all our plants on drip irrigation.

If I can locate a photo of our landscape back then, I'll post it. I know the sand cherries were in at least one of those photos.

Is this what you are considering?

Here is a link that might be useful: sand cherry

That's a very pretty plant. I searched for it at Dave's Garden where it's been reported to grow in Colorado, Texarkana and Oklahoma. Definitely sounds worth trying. Let us know how it works out.

Here is a link that might be useful: Dave's Garden

I wanted to let you know that I appreciate all of your advice on the purple leaf sand cherry. I ordered one today that will arrive in about 2 weeks, so I will get to experiment!

In doing my search, I found another interesting plant, the Royal Purple Smokebush. It can be trained into a tree and looks really unique, but more info is needed before I try it in my zone.

Thanks so much for your help!

I planted 6 small ones at my old house and limbed them up to small trees. They seemed to be healthier that way. It took them 3 years to look good as about a 5-6' tree.
Three died the first year and as far as I know the other 3 are still there and would be about 6 yrs old. They were all planted under the canopies of larger trees. I am a little SW of Ft Worth in Granbury.
I loved the color. I think in our climate they need shade.

smokebuhes are wonderful - get them and love them - I have three and I am always looking where I could add a few more here! No extra water, no trimming, and they grow and bloom like crazy...

get the smokebush you will love it.