boy what a nightmare scenario ....

trust me.. what you have time.. or are willing to do today .. may not be so in the future ... kids got in the way of a lot of my projects.. lol ..

you are thinking of taking some potentially GIANT trees.. and try to keep them under say 10 feet for a hedge.. presuming 10 feet is what is safe pruning height... short of scaffolding or a bucket truck ...

yikes...

contact your soil conservation district ... in the white pages under USGVMT .... or the local Ag office .... and find out about their spring offerings of shrubs.. which are zone and height appropriate to your task ....

think of it this way ... a maple .... can easily grow 5 feet per year ... how are you going to tame it???? same with elm.. mulberry ... and boxelder ...

these are trees.. not shrubs ...

good luck

love to see it if in fact you do do it...

ken

Some of the trees in my area seem to naturally grow with their limbs all the way to the ground - some oaks, tulip poplar, sweetgum, river birch. If you can handle the mature heights and widths - 40-80' x 20-50', then I see no problem with it for at least 20 years. After that time, the natural shading may well cause some of the lower branches to die off. It may not as well, since they will be growing out as the tree grows up, but it depends on the spacing at which they are growing - some of the neighboring trees may cast too much shade. However, by that time, the total effect should be of a mass of trees!

If you planted, or allowed to grow up, a grouping of shrubs/smaller trees at the front of the trees, it would contribute to the screening effect for the lower areas. But, you want to allow at the minimum 30' of width for this project, maybe more like 60', so it looks natural.

HOWEVER, if you wanted to keep these to a certain height, then as Ken said, I wouldn't even begin. Most of these, once established, will grow very tall, and quite fast. You may have to trim these more than once a year. If it is well within your capacities now, will it be 20 years from now? You would do much better to opt for shrubs that naturally grow densely and not over 15'. Adding one or more of your "free" seedlings to the hedge to add height (NOT trimming it with the shrubs) - supposing you aren't looking for uniformity of leaf, etc. - might add to the look of your hedge. The major drawback I could see there would be the shade the tree would cast - it might adversely affect the hedge.

Thanks for your help. I am fairly limited with width - 10 feet or so. The higher the better in my case as it is to screen out a neighbor.

I think I will stick with my plan to do a mixed hedge of arborvitae, juniperus virginiana, viburnum, hydrangeas, lilacs and yew. I don't know how this will look, I have a fairly long run 300 feet to cover.

I am breaking it up into sections. 1st: 10 lilacs, 2nd section: autumn jazz viburnum, 3rd: as yet undecided 4th: mix of techny and green giant arborvitae and juniperus 5th: hicksii yew 6th: tardiva hydrangeas

I would have liked to do all one type of shrub, but since the run is so long, our property runs through several types of soil/drainage and several shade/sun percentages which makes this impossible.