JB, 3 or 4 feet high will not afford much privacy unless you are hunched over right next to the shrub line picking weeds or picking up a ball. An expectation for privacy in your front yard seems to be a tall order to fill. Your current plant layout doesn't provide screening views from the side views. The rule of thumb for privacy is a six-ft high fence or planting, but having that in your front yard would seem to be anti-social. Privacy outside is somewhat hard to do in the suburbs with neighbors so close together and two-story houses. When I go outside I don't expect privacy, and I don't do anything outside I would be embarrassed to be seen doing. Okay I sing to my girls, but that's only embarrassing if you were to hear me! I find total privacy (meaning no views to the outside of my yard) to be unsettling, because I like to look out of my yard to see what's happening. A screen of fence or plants with select breaks allows for viewing the outside world from inside the confines of the yard, but any passerby would have to be more deliberate in intruding to view into your yard. I would think, if you are using the front for playing then, what you really need is more security. A fence or planting to keep kiddos, toys, and bikes from leaving the yard. What I have noticed in my neighborhood is that if cars can see my kids in the front, then they tend to slow down and drive more carefully.

Those are yews and they look good - they dont look overgrown either. Those hedges could grow even more vertically and provide even more privacy for those folks (or items!) on the verandah. Yews are slow growers and they can be pruned back but will take a while to fill in. A compromise might be to add interest by leaving the end plants (thats four of them; two either end of your two small "hedges") and prune back the tops of the middle of the hedge. You could interplant between the (temporarily) bare bushes with flowers. I used this approach with a foundation planting of old maxi rhodies - rather than pulling them out I cut them back a bit and interplanted with new small hybrid rhodies - as a result I needed fewer new material and it saved me money. After a year or two it looked terrific and the old rhodies were just a hardly noticeable part of the "visual" and I gradually removed them altogether. In my case what I would do now if I had to do that over would be to interplant with Otto Luykens laurel. This is a low habitat laurel and its easy to shear as well. If you remove the yews this somewhat narrow house will look unbalanced initially - most importantly what kind of surface is there BEHIND the yews. Whatever that is you will be looking at that surface - probably just rough concrete - full in the face for a long time while any replacement plants grow.

If you do not want to install a stucco fence, if city code allows intall a short electric fence along the back property line to discourage wild animals from invading and eating your landscaping. Then Plant two rows of Thuja Plicata Green Giants in a staggered pattern for the entire length of your house. Plant all the trees on 10 foot centers, and be sure to dig the planting holes for the back row of trees at least 6 feet away from the easement. Also, space the center holes for the front row of trees at least 10 feet infront of the back row. X,,,X,,,X,,,X,,,X...X...X...X...X...X...X ...X...X,,,X...X...X...X...X...X...X...X county drainage easment, county drainage easement As you can see from the planting example created by the rows of Xs above, it will take 21 trees planted on 10 feet centers to cover each 100 linear feet of your back boundry that you want to plant with Thuja Plicata Green Giants. If you want to plant them for nearly the length of your home and and if that linear length is more than 200 feet, then you will need to plant more than 42 of these trees. If you wanted to plant the entire 400 yard linear boundry line than you will need to plant 84 of these trees. If you can purchase 84 one gallon sized potted trees, purchasing that many should be much easier on your budget. For each of these one gallon size trees you choose to purchase just predig holes 3 feet wide in diameter by 10 inches to 1 foot deep. Also pre install a drip watering system with outlets, which once the trees are planted, can be positioned to water each tree individually. A high graded quality one gallon Thuja Plicata Green Giant tree should be anywhere from 12 to 18 inches tall and have a well filled in pyramid shape. If the winters are mild in your part of California, then one gallon trees that are watered correctly and given slow release non burning fertilizer at the beginning of each growing season, should be expected to acclimate fairly quickly and grow at least 6 to 12 inches during the first year after you plant them. The next year if you have been good to keep them watered properly, and fertized at the approprate times, they should grow at least an addtional 3 feet. By the end of the 3rd year if you have still kept them watered at the right amounts, and fertilized appropriately, then they should have grown an additional 5 feet. That means your trees by the end of the 3rd year, could at the very least have grown to be about 11 feet tall. By that time, it is possible that they could have spread enough, if you planted two staggered rows to almost be giving you a solid wall affect for at least the 4 feet up the trees' height. Every year there after they should grow at about 5 feet, and as long as you keep them fertilized properly their skinny new top growth should keep filling out at a fairly nice pace. Other wise if the trees are not fertilized at the beginning of their growing season, but if they get the right amount of soil moisture, they will grow taller, but the new growth will look thin and sparce, while taking over six months or more to ever fill out with a well balanced branching pattern. If your trees begin to take on such an appearance, by all means resist the temptation to snip of that thin up shoot of growth. Instead simply begin feeding and watering the tree properlly and it will respond by producing a nice amount of branches on that upshoot of new growth and also, follow that with more new height growth. With these trees, always remember that any branch you cut off at the trunk will not grow back, so if for any reason the lower branches become brown due to the tree not getting enough water, or the tree's roots suffocating from too much water, do not cut those branches off to the trunk. So do not purchase trees which have a lot of lower trunk showing. Also if after plantings the trees encounter too dry of soil and begin to brown. Do not prune away the brown branches. Instead you can remove the dead needles if you would like, and simply begin making certain the tree gets adequate moisture. Then be patient and if you have begun the better care paractices in time, you can be assured the tree will grow new green needles on those bare dead looking branches you left on the tree. If the tree's lower branches begin to die due to soggy soil conditions which suffocate the tree's root system, you should wait to see if these dead looking branches will recover, with proper care of the tree, but in that situation there is not such a high chance these will respond as well as desired. If you plant a wall of these trees, than to prevent them looking boring consider planting a variety of shorter and not to broad of spreading ornamentsl shrubs planted and spaced appropriately infront and lined up with the middle of the front row of tree's spacing. At the feet of the ornamental shrubs you could install a border planting of continuously flowering, or very decorative leafed one to two feet tall potential growing plants or shrubs.

I agree that solid privacy fence is probably the best option, even if he/she just does that one section of view. Another thought of mine was to plant a tree like swedish columnar aspen. My initial thought was that you can keep it narrow at the base and then let it grow wider near the top, but this probably wouldn't work, since near the bottom is where they want the privacy and these trees are somewhat just bare trunk near the bottom. Cedars wouldn't work as well, unless perhaps thuja occidentalis 'degroots spire' cedar but even then it would take a while to gain any height (not to mention expensive to try to make a hedge out of many of them, might as well buy a section of privacy fence). Maybe lattice and an aggressive yet dependable vine like virginia creeper? Dropmore honeysuckle? The only downside with any vine is that in early spring, late fall and winter there would be no leaves so poochie would be able to see through. Hard to believe he/she doesn't bark when he just hears the kids as opposed to seeing them. I'm no dog trainer but perhaps the owner has to get involved and start scolding him when he growls at the fence? Somehow make him understand the kids are not in his territory? I wonder if he's one of those dogs that's just left outside alone all the time, which can lead to behavior problems too. Anyways, I hope there's a solution as I can't imagine it's pleasant for the kids to be growled at in their own back yard, nor for the neighbors who probably listen to the dog barking. Glen