i tried to google .. but your spelling is so far off.. i couldnt find the plant you are asking about ... go figure on that ...

all trees have an annual growth rate... which is attained after the tree gets 'established' ...

it is said that a smaller tree will get acclimated.. and ESTABLISHED ... faster than a transplant of a larger tree ... ergo.. attaining its annual growth rate faster.. and getting to the height you want .. and beyond ...

that said.. it is hard to give you any hard and fast time schedule .. not knowing anything about the stock you are thinking about buying.. like whether it was field grown and tranpslanted into a pot.. pot grown forever... rootbound in the pot for year after year.. etc ... just so many variables.. that it will be hard to guess ..

all that said.. i doubt you will ever be happy .. since you seem so fixated on 'wanting quick privacy' .. growing trees is all about patience.. and decades .. not really something that happens in a year or two ...

if you want it that fast.. and that is the only thing that is important.. buy as big as the budget will allow ...

good luck

ken

HEY!!!!!

there is still snow in my yard ...

i have no clue what grows in so cal ... phonetic or not.. i need something to go on.. and simply was amazed.. google let me down entirely ... lol ...

anyway ... all i was pointing out.. and you got the message ... IF the goal is privacy ... THEN SOLVE THAT PROBLEM with a bigger plant ...

instead of thinking about cheaping out on the smaller ...

its like two diametrically opposed goals ..

take care.. be happy

ken

That would be Rhaphiolepis, sometimes spelled Raphiolepis :-)

In general, younger, smaller plants do establish faster than those with greater age/maturity. But how fast that is will depend on location, soil conditions, aftercare and the condition of the plant at time of planting (not root bound or with congested, circling roots). Growth rate for Majestic Beauty ('Montic') is reported as moderate to very slow, depending on who you ask :-) How much patience you have to wait for your privacy screening may be the best determinate of what size to purchase to begin with.

btw, this selection is listed as a shrub or small tree, depending on how it is trained.

"HEY!!!!!
there is still snow in *my yard ..."
* and I'll bet your yard is waaay bigger than my plot and hence your sneer re privacy...ha! :>)
Well, that's the price you pay for the heart-stopping spring you are soon to enjoy, followed by warm summer nights and lightning bugs, not to mention the glorious autumns...sigh. I've learned to love it here, but I still remember and miss all the above. Roses without Jap. beetles are the compensation, I guess.
If dogwood, azaleas, rhododendron and forsythia (all the greats of my childhood) were California's "ubiquitous" plants would they bore me? Hard to imagine. I'm trying be more appreciative of Indian Hawthorn( easier to spell!), Ornamental plums ,freeway daisies( could there be an uglier common name) and all the rest that are our mainstays..
Oops! See I've strayed OT...sorry. Gardengal, I've enjoyed lurking over your informative posts....thanks so much for you input here.

If you can get hold of some small B & B Rapheolepis, you'd have some faster growth than with container stock, but you'd pay a lot more money for them. I totally agree that nice healthy smaller plants will begin to grow much sooner and with more vigor than the larger ones. These plants are notoriously slow growers (as mentioned by gardengal), so don't get your hopes up.

Is Rapheolepis your only option?

No, it just grows so easily( I have them doing well in filtered sun in my yard already), it's readily available in nurseries, and seems to fill the bill in most ways. I've eliminated some of the other usual( around here) suspects because of all my frustrating parameters: no litter to bother my close neighbor's pool, fairly dense, 6 ft. tall, moderate-fast growth, filtered- light tolerant, and traditional-formal in appearance. I'd go for a big $$ camellia if I thought it wouldn't be fussy and die. I'll go to a nursery that used to carry b&b quite a bit and see. Any suggestions would be very welcome!

I have no knowledge of Rhaphiolepis, since it doesn't grow well here, but will comment on the "smaller is quicker" concept. I think of this as being true for TREES that have been balled and burlapped. Since a tree's roots ON AVERAGE grow about 18" per year away from the trunk (OK, OK, all trees are different, but this is average as I have been taught in college classes), a larger tree, say 4" caliper, has a much greater rootspan than an 1-1/2" tree that is years younger. When the trees are dug, fewer roots are chopped from the 1-1/2" tree than the 4" tree. The result is that the larger tree takes more years to recover and take off than the smaller. Having said that, a SHRUB that has been container grown has lost NO roots when transplanted unless it was rootbound and root-pruned. It would be my honest opinion that the 15 gallon would have an advantage over the 5 gallon unless it was root-butchered. Also, being a wholesale plant buyer for my company, I know that the 15 gallon will cost a large arm and a large leg more than the 5. If you have hundred dollar bills hanging out of your pockets, go for it!
hortster

Even if grown in containers, a 5-gallon specimen will catch up to and surpass a 15-gallon of the same kind in 2 - 3 years. Said differently, younger woodies develop an extensive root system more rapidly than older/larger specimens of the same kind.

Thank you,hortster, that made it very easy to visualize!
Jean, I do appreciate the info. Lots of generous and knowledgeable folks here...lucky for me!
If anyone is still here, I wanted to say I think I may have found a really great choice: Cleyera "Bronze Beauty". Now, if I can just find one.
Ken, I hope your snow melts soon and spring comes early!

The only reason larger specimens dug out of the ground are more affected by the move is that in practice a smaller proportion of roots come away with them, due to the weight and size of the larger balls.

Plants in pots will establish quicker than plants in field soil balls for the same reason - the balled and burlapped stock is missing some of its roots. Often there are barely more feeder roots still present on such specimens than on bare-rooted plants overwintered in a cool storage facility.

As mentioned, a common variable is that container-grown stock is frequently rootbound and should be bare-rooted at planting. However, unless most of the roots need to be pruned at planting, due to defects there will still be more feeder roots left on the plant than is usual with plants acquired balled in burlap. And these need to be bare-rooted at planting as well, since there was often a period of time spent in a small, confining pot before planting out in a field occurred.

And you do not want to install into the final planting site with coarse potting medium or fine field soil on the roots, forming a pocket of different-textured material surrounded by native soil of perhaps quite dissimilar structure. When nursery plants are put in the ground with intact rootballs there can be failures due to movement of water into and out of such rootballs being affected in undesirable ways.

In addition to those deformed roots not being resolved. I had foundation shrubs perhaps 20 years in place fall over in the snow one year. When I dug them up they had root knots at the bases of the stems dating way back to when they were left in small pots too long by the production nursery.

The most consistent and obvious examples I see here are camellias sent up from certain large wholesale grower(s) in California, with turnip-like or square roots often visible above the potting medium. For this reason I seldom buy camellias at garden centers here.

Grafted conifers and other small grafted stock is also so often trapped on badly deformed, j-rooted or corksrew rootstocks at outlets here that they seldom get money from me for these groups either. The last time I bought a grafted conifer - labeled as having come from a high-profile Oregon grower whose catalogs have a history of crowing about their high quality - the rootstock consisted of a hair-like braid that went down and then up in a j, like a tail or fishhook.

Seeing no way to correct it without killing the specimen, I threw the whole thing away instead of wasting additional time planting a tree that seemed certain to fail later.

A way needs to be found to generate enough of a backlash to get production nurseries to stop spewing out rootbound trash. In the meantime buyer beware.

Very aware.

A 5 gallon shrub may be as little as one year older than a 1 gallon specimen of the same item from the same grower. The faster they get them to size up and sell, the more money they make off their land.

I'm trying hard to understand all this. I gather that whenever I buy a potted shrub I should shake off ALL the soil ( really???) it comes with to:
a) be sure there is none of "their soil" which, when mixed with MY soil, does not blend well, causing air pockets, etc. I learned about this a few years ago and stopped adding anything to the planting hole, amending with compost and mulch later.
b)Carefully check the roots, which is far easier to do if there is no soil.
Question: there are some plants that need to be gently re-planed intact with the soil...bougainvillea is all that comes to mind, but imagine there are more? Is it totally safe to remove a plant from a 5 gal.pot and then remove all the soil before planting? How about a 15 gal.? Surely not! :>O Have a feeling this all sounds reeeeally ignorant, but love learning from this forum, so TIA!.

Have a look at this PDF.

Here is a link that might be useful: Horticultural techniques for successful plant establishment

Thanks for that PDF, bboy. This is how I would plant bareroot. It is new and shocking to me that it applies to 5-15 gal. potted shrubs or trees...does it..really? Wow! This is brand new information. Very, very interesting, but a little scary to do the first time. How long have all of you pros been planting this way??? Hmmm, maybe none of you buy potted plants from nurseries.

Planting with intact root-balls will still be the norm on landscape jobs. This includes leaving burlap on etc. in many instances.

Lots of trees and shrubs die on commercial jobs here, too.

The thing about bare-rooting at planting is that you have to keep the plant moist enough afterward for it to come through. Even then a deciduous type planted in leaf may lose the current set of leaves. But kept moist it will re-foliate later.

Better than it girdling later or not establishing due to excessive damp or dry around the roots, due to soil textural differences.

Retailers are loathe to recommend it because they expect a crushing burden of failed purchases being brought back - shoppers not understanding what they are dealing with when bare-rooting at planting.

Purchases failing on the customer later, when they are not liable to attempt to get satisfaction out of the vendor is apparently not so much of a concern.

I'm just seeing this last reply bboy. Very, very informative. Still not reallllly sure I'd have the confidence to 'bare root' plant a big leafed-out shrub..yikes. May have to give it a try, though. Makes sense. Thank you!