Barely short of a month since Spring began on March 20th... enough has emerged and burst into growth to create a very pleasant spring garden. And this pleasant garden might continue to be just that for another month or so.
The record breaking Ice Storm last October did severe damage to the semi-mature Silver Maple that shaded this garden. A good number of large branches snapped under the weight of the ice and an inept tree crew removed a large number of limbs that created the crown. At the moment I'm guessing the tree will provide 50% of the shade it provided last year... and this could cause a significant change in direction for this bed. We shall see.

Silver Maples grow quickly and fill back in, unlike harder wood trees such as oaks or evergeens like cedars. In a couple of years it may fill in quite a lot for you.

You may well live in an area in which Silver Maples grow well and are favorably thought of.

In central Oklahoma I spent 34 years designing residential gardens... and I take quiet pride in NEVER ONCE selling a client a Silver Maple, a Hackberry, a cottony Cottonwood, or a Mimosa. NEVER ONCE.

well they do great here and people love them (their ignorance is bliss I guess) but they don't belong in small town yards. If you have say close to 2 acres, maybe a choice, but there are better trees. With that said they do have spectacular fall color, leaf out earlier than many trees, and do fill in over a reasonable time if they are storm damaged. The roots are destructive. It's a toss up, pros and cons. I'm not sure I'd be proud of never selling even one in a 34 yr span,... you sure you never strong armed a customer into not getting something they wanted? One thing is, they do like water and lots of it, not sure how OKcity is there, but when I lived in Lawton, it was so dead and dry it sucked my soul away and I could only endure it for 18 months. I couldn't stand there were no trees, oh they had trees-at least that's what they called them, to me just scrubby over grown shrubs. The wind was relentless. My husband came home from work one night, found me packing. Whatcha doin?! I said "I'm going back home to MO, if you wanna come or not,?" I ain't messin' around!

Your "defense" of Silver Maples is admirable and I can say without hesitation I have seen several enormous and beautiful specimens in the St. Louis area. Out here on the Great Plains, where "wind is relentless", rain is sporadic and the clay soil and water supply is alkaline... these four trees are considered "trash" trees. The benefit derived from rapid growth is more than offset by the aggressive, invasive root system and weak wood that topples in our ice and wind and rain storms.
I cannot agree with you enough that Lawton is a rough town to be avoided if possible. To be fair -- I had a doctor from Lawton as a client for several years and he had a magnificent garden on his acre of land. The number of varieties of plants he grew was daunting.
I'm perfectly comfortable with my record on those four trees. Without "strong arming" a single customer I sold them a lot of Oaks, Ginkgo, 'Oklahoma' Redbud, 'Texas' Whitebud, Japanese Maples, Sargent Crabapple, 'Prairiefire' Crabapple, Japanese Black Pine, Bosnian Redcone Pine, Weeping Alaskan Cypress, Cedar of Lebanon, Paperbark Maple, River Birch, Bald Cypress, 'Golden Rey' Lacebark Elm, Dogwood... We regularly carried over one hundred varieties of trees...
Best wishes living in Missouri... it is a lush and green state. When in Saint Louis please visit the Missouri Botanical Garden... it is magnificent!!!

I have never been to the Missouri Botanical garden in spite of living in Springfield my whole life (minus those dry 18 months). The problem w OK I guess yes you can grow a spectacular garden if you can afford the water bills, and I guess hauling in decent soil-cause I sure didn't see any of either where I was at. We had a silver maple here 8 yrs ago when we bought our current house, and I talked husband into cutting it down, he didn't want to do it. But some idiot planted it literally 5 ft from the house. He's glad now we got rid of it. We cut about 25 trees here. Was a ton of work, but they were all so badly storm damaged, never pruned properly, or just trash trees. Several just planted in bad places, had an elm 10 ft from our septic tank, one of the first to go. We have since planted many other trees.