Thank You For Not Planting Ficus. ;-)

I think you'll be most satisfied with the cape honeysuckle, Tecoma capensis. It must be maintained; long branches that fall to the ground will root, but it is easily controlled. With 3-4 trims annually it will look reasonably well-groomed. It fits your need for low water use -- ONCE ESTABLISHED. It must be watered to get going, say the first year or two. This will be much faster than avocado trees or loquat trees.

Bamboo in the right place is a thing of beauty, but this is not the right place -- good call.

Edit: As I mentioned before the edit, the trees don't really produce privacy (once limbed up) ... I forgot about the part where you were propose to create a trellis by running (heavy) wires between posts and growing a vine on it. That's a workable idea IF the plants chosen are tolerant of heavy shade. Though I can't speak to the plants you've mentioned as possible contenders, I've used the same scheme with Clerodendron thomsoniae and it worked pretty well. However, the bloom was substantially cut compared to what the plant is otherwise capable of with more light. Another factor that you should consider is that your proposed plan (adding "ceiling" and "wall" created of plants) is that your yard will be dark, which will seem gloomy. Instead of combining these elements at the same location, you might consider growing the vine where you don't need high elevation screening and growing a screening tree/shrub where you wish to screen the neighboring buildings. Avocado and Loquat would probably not be the best choice for screening unless you were prepared to stringently control them with regular pruning. It seems like narrower plants would be better.

This post was edited by Yardvaark on Mon, Jun 3, 13 at 8:29

What about planting one or two podocarpus or pittosporum silver screens to block the two two-story monster structures and just letting them grow up like trees? We'll be sinking posts and running horizontal wires for vines for lower coverage. So we'll only need to block the upper story views.

Which do you think would be better: podocarpus or pittosporum? Or maybe one podocarpus in front of the house on the left in the picture, and one pittosporum in front of the house on the right? Can we just let them grow up like trees? Without trimming? I hope they won't block the light our avocado tree gets, and this is the reason we were originally thinking of planting a companion avocado tree. But privacy is more important to us than fruit. We can always buy avocados at the farmers market.

This is our fourth lot, and up in Laurel Canyon. It's a shady lot with partial sun, and the microclimate is a perfect blend of coastal marine and inland heat -- rarely too hot or too cold. If it gets more shady, that's okay with us. It's only one part of our yard, and the one farthest removed from the house. Eventually we would like to put in about a 300 sq ft home office/guest room for visitors, so we need to privatize the area now.

Also, what size plant would you start with? We want to get a head start on this, asap. And in the ground before November.

What about planting one or two podocarpus or pittosporum silver screens to block the two two-story monster structures and just letting them grow up like trees? We'll be sinking posts and running horizontal wires for vines for lower coverage. So we'll only need to block the upper story views.

Which do you think would be better: podocarpus or pittosporum? Or maybe one podocarpus in front of the house on the left in the picture, and one pittosporum in front of the house on the right? Can we just let them grow up like trees? Without trimming? I hope they won't block the light our avocado tree gets, and this is the reason we were originally thinking of planting a companion avocado tree. But privacy is more important to us than fruit. We can always buy avocados at the farmers market.

This is our fourth lot, and up in Laurel Canyon. It's a shady lot with partial sun, and the microclimate is a perfect blend of coastal marine and inland heat -- rarely too hot or too cold. If it gets more shady, that's okay with us. It's only one part of our yard, and the one farthest removed from the house. Eventually we would like to put in about a 300 sq ft home office/guest room for visitors, so we need to privatize the area now.

Also, what size plant would you start with? We want to get a head start on this, asap. And in the ground before November.

Which do you think would be better: podocarpus or pittosporum - Pittosporum will grow three times faster than podocarpus.