I planted some new variety of boxwood from Monrovia which were supposed to grow to 8 feet. After 3 years they are only 2-3 feet tall. Would not recommend them.
If I had to chose another plant, I think I'd do Podocarpus.
Red-tip Photinia is very common here.
There's a list on the FAQ for the California Gardening forum that addresses this question, but don't know how appropriate the plants would be for your locale.
Janelle
(who took out a 30 year old privet hedge along my property line in order to grow roses.... and planted the boxwood to try to block the boat/RV the tenant parked next to the roses)

Here is a link that might be useful: Narrow privacy hedges/screens

Not evergreen but I do love Oakleaf hydrangeas. A row of those would be beautiful since they can get large. I've had bad experiences with Mountain Laurel but when done right they're awesome from what I've seen...we have a rather leggy one sandwiched between our ancient yew bushes near our lampost.

Ever consider some American Holly trees, like Yaupon holly? I'm sure there are some types that don't get too large. Florida Anise could be interesting too, I know there are some hardier types out there for sure, same with Agarista populifolia...

Hi Ann,

I have seen Burfordi holly that grew large fast (about 10 feet in maybe 6 years, though I don't know the initial size of the plants). It formed a dense hedge along the southeast side of a house.

It's attractive and not hard to grow if it's happy.

Best wishes,
Mary

I was also going to recommend Burford Holly. It's what some prior owner of our house used for foundation plants, and it was completely ill-suited for that task. For an informal, tall, evergreen boundary, I expect it would be lovely. It also has the advantage of having only one sharp holly point per leaf, which makes it WAY easier to work with than other hollies.

Look at the blog post below, to see our hollies before I removed them.

Connie

Here is a link that might be useful: blog post

I'm not 100% sure of the spelling but Euonymus? we have the green/yellow variety. I keep mine at about 4 feet, but my neighbors are easily 10 feet and could probably get taller. They are dense, no sharp leaves, and evergreen. They are so dense that the birds love to nest in them.

Ann, here we have viburnum but it's not the same one you have farther north that gets the nice white pompom flowers, but it gets really huge & dense eventually. Just saw one the other day that was gorgeous - a mountain of a plant about 12' tall walling in the yard. Don't know if it's actually a fast grower though - I mean, here it is but it still takes years. My neighbor bought some sort of holly bushes/trees that don't have the excruciatingly sharp leaves - much softer - as 6' tall x 3-4' wide plants that were only about $50 each last year or the year before. Very dense but haven't gotten a lot taller yet. I'm sure what grows here won't like it there, but maybe there's a version. Plus at my age I would splurge on bigger plants since I probably have less time than money - though not much of that either. :))

Sherry

The two things I use and should be OK for your zone also are: clumping bamboo and elderberry.
The clumping bamboo takes about 3 years to get clumpy but never invades.
Elderberry can run a little but it's not really invasive if you mow the grass. It grows fast, is narrow and tall and is wildlife friendly. Mine is 9 feet in 2 years.

Bamboo comes in many zones and colors but is expensive because it is slow to propagate. Only the running kind is cheap so if it's cheap don't buy it.

Ann, we have access to wonderful tall evergreen shrubs for a mild climates, not one of which is hardy in your climate. Here, the hollies are painfully slow growing. Our Burford holly is just now reaching the eaves of the roof, and they were planted in 1997.

Take a look at the MOBOT plantfinder. I don't know if you want to spec Zone 6 or Zone 5 for a margin of safety, but you can search for hedge - evergreen - hardiness zone. It's a pretty short list.

The UConn plantfinder has a couple of different selections. There's a nice looking laurel on the list, Prunus laurocerasus 'Schipkaensis'. Some places like here they get shot hole.

Here is a link that might be useful: Missouri Botanical Garden plant finder

For evergreens you might want to look at yew (taxus), some of them grow reasonably mannerly. Then there are Junipers, but they can be rather slow growing. Also spruce and low kinds of pine can be used as a hedge, but spruce you may need to prune into shape (unless it is those small growing varieties).

Also there are Thujas, which often are very mannerly (especially Thuja occidentalis).

Hi Connie,

We have a couple of plants here that are supposed to br Burfordi holly, and they do have multiple sharp points on the leaves. No doubt there are mulitple forms of Burfordi holly, but I'm assuming that whatever we have is the most commonly available form, since my husband bought them in a big box store. Ours is also not the dwarf form, just the regular full-sized Burfordi holly.

I enjoyed your blog and will try to post some specific suggestions there soon.

Best wishes,
Mary

what about pyracantha - this is a terrfic evergreen which can be espaliered so you can have a thick green hedge/fedge which is only 10cm wide! I am using it for a customer to hide a hideous ckainlink fence along their ridiculously long and thin (4m wide!) garden. Blossoms in spring, berries all winter, prickly thorns, birds love it - what is there not to like - oh yes, it grows quick, mannerly and is as cheap as chips.

oh yeah, pyracantha's are very lovely, it is really a gem in the winter garden. Do you need a supporting fence to make a hedge from them though? I have a few young plants and they seem to be a bit wobbly to stand on their own?

Hops are very vigorous, pretty and drought tolerant. They die back though in the winter leaving a bunch of dead vines that you might not want to deal with. I like Thujas,especially the columnular ones.

pyrocanthia may grow mannerly in the UK, but not here in the SE. Mine is a monster that I need to cut back. The thorns are a bit daunting. I do love the red berries in winter (and so do the cedar waxwings) and the little white flowers in spring. Most people have it up against a fence.

Thank you so much.
When I posted this, I didn't realize that HughesNet was about to punish me with ultra slow ISP service because my new computer had been downloading upgrades without telling me. I finally got service back this afternoon.

Pyracantha has been with me everywhere I've lived (so I didn't even consider it).(Duh). Its berries even make a great jelly if they mature to the point that birds are going after them for the alcohol in them. (New Orleans drunken birds.)
Oak Leaf Hydrangeas do really well on some soils in this area. An Aunt has one that has reached hedge size (VW bus).
We have a wild elderberry back near the cleared out area. More of them would do really well (and a cousin has a fondness for Elderberry Jelly from her childhood.)
The Hollies sound interesting (and worth counting sharp points.)
I love Euronomus, but a nursery in this part of the world got scale in (in the 30s) and did nothing to control it so the state had to step in. By that time Scale had spread horribly. My Grandmother's Euron. by her front porch were never vigorous and only as an adult did I realize that the neat polkadotted stems were scale infestations. That's a fight I don't want as a memory.
Thanks for the MOBOT and UConn plant finder guides. If I can keep my net usage down, I'll try to get on them tonight.

(One smile: I thought yesterday that one of my fenceline roses was blooming way early; it just has a redbud tree blooming in the middle of it.)

Many thanks,
Ann

Have you quit collecting roses entirely due to RRD? That would be a disaster for me. Did the Harison's Yellow I sent you get it?
I have a neighbor with a big, acre long hedge of cotoneaster on both sides of her property. It's a nice bush with shiny leaves that turn scarlet in the fall. Gets 10-12 feet tall.
It makes a nice semi-formal effect. Since it is the windbreak you're after, it would make a good choice.

Here is a link that might be useful: cotoneaster

I posted that website and got to reading--sale ended March 17th and you have to pick them up. Darn. I was shopping hard before I found that out.
Great picture, anyway.

Do you have any hollies that are native to your area? Hollies are beautiful, and here in Florida we have several native varieties that don't have the sharp leaves if that might be an issue with you. Yaupons and East Palatka come to mind, but they are natives of Florida and am not sure how they grow elsewhere. Here in Florida the Burfordi Holly gets ugly.

Hollies make a lovely backdrop to roses, have always been pest free for me, and grow densely. Most of them are reasonable in size.

I would suggest you look into native shrubs available in your area and go from there. The exotics will never be as pleasing or as healthy.

Sandy

I haven't given up collecting roses. I probably never will. But as I get older, I realize I hate to weed even more. We had that horrid late April freeze, followed by two years of severe drought. Nature did some removal of less than enthusiastic roses.
We have redesigned rose beds for better air flow and some modern roses are not worthy of the spray regimes they require.
Harrison's Yellow remains a staple (voles DO like the roots, but it outgrows their attempts down in the loamy soil at the base of the hill. I think HY's roots are down into the rock layer through which no voles and moles can chew.)

Our Native plants are being overwhelmed by two different honeysuckles and privet. Multiflora is much less of a problem, and with the farm up wind of us sold off as farmettes, with deed restrictions requiring good husbandry, we many not have worse multiflora upwind than we do at present.

I wonder if the local collector of hollies would know of some natives. I haven't seen any in our woods (our only evergreens seem to be cedars and pines under bark beetle attack.)

Nasty little blizzard again today. It is getting sickening. I looked out the window and decided not to go to work. I sent the old man a sandwich from Pickle Barrel.
It is almost the middle of April, but it just doesn't want to give it up this year.
Famous local quote: "We need the moisture."
Yeah, right. It has been ten years since the Feds attempted to burn down Montana.
New local quote: "What happened to that good old-fashioned greenhouse effect?"
As you know, I am very hard to please.
The list of pent up garden projects is as follows: Relocate raspberries, choked by grass. Relocate two mock oranges from an area on the southeast corner of the house that never gets any moisture. Tip: mock oranges should be planted under the eaves of the house here to protect the flower buds from frost. Otherwise, you'll never see them bloom.
Relocate 11 eglanteria that suckered across the back porch. A bloody job.
Relocate 4 sumac that suckered across the septic tank.
Relocate 20 Harison Yellow suckers.
Relocate a lilac hedge temporarily planted in the garden 12 years ago.
Relocate two deep purple lilacs to the spot vacated by the eglanteria.
Relocate 30 roses from their pots to somewhere.
Two peonies, and 20 trays of flowers to seed up.
Relocate Hallie's Rose, which hangs over the driveway and scrapes the paint off my car.
Relocate all the American Plum suckers on the other side of the driveway.
Relocate two spirea that have been growing in my greenhouse for years.
Relocate two R. moyessi that get terrible care. I have never seen them bloom.
The trim on the back of the house needs paint. At least ten fence posts for the horse pasture need replaced.
Okay, I'm going to shut up and quit whining now. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.
I was wondering how far this privet was from the back of your house, because what first occurred to me was a Christmas tree lot. Every year it gets thinned at Christmas. In ten years, they're ten feet tall.
Other than that, I did find a holly native to Tennesse. From the picture, it doesn't look like a very good windbreak, but hard to tell.

Here is a link that might be useful: Holly

sheesh kaylah - what are you - a human dynamo? These are a lot of garden jobs. Poor thing - it must be sickening hearing all this wittering on from folk who have roses blooming NOW. How long is your growing season? Do you have fabulous summers? What is the light like - I don't mind the cold so much as the dark, short days of winter. It will be another 2 months till I get roses but spring is definately about in Cambridge, even though I still have tights under my trousers. So hey, vent away - there is nothing like a good rant to lift your spirits.

Have you considered cherry laurel? The species is really lovely, evergreen and gets big. I have to be satisfied with the hybrid Otto Lutyen.

Just a suggestion.

Barbara

"Relocate a lilac hedge temporarily planted in the garden 12 years ago"

"chuckles".
That sounds awfully familiar.

Six inches of new snow this evening, but it looks like it's tapering off. I got half my new bedroom curtains sewed.
Campanula, the only thing that really gets me is when somebody puts up a picture of a really superb rose garden, the one with the climbers rolling around the circle and waves of roses undulating into the misty distance and the lilies are five feet tall. Ain't gonna happen here.
As for being a human dynamo, my back's given out so these piled up jobs are getting deeper. When you have a lot of room, it's easy to keep stuffing in more plants. In the wrong place.
Some years we get really superb summers. Last two years it rained and poured until June 15th--BUT, "We need the moisture." Before that, it hit 100 degrees and stayed that way every summer for years due to that global warming nobody believes in.
It's easier to see the difference in the climate in the mountains, I guess. Warmer winters, warmer summers.
The 100 degree summers have gone away, at least. And the return of spring rain after years of drought is a blessing.

Kaylah,
We don't have blizzards but I can understand how sick you are of winter; we had a long one ourselves and are still pretty darned intolerant of chilly winds and cloudy skies, like a sore throat when you're recovering from pneumonia. I'm still pruning out freeze damage on the roses and eliminating plants from my list of shrubs that are hardy in an exposed position(pittosporum is GONE!) Like Ann, I have hedges on my mind. Our big garden is totally exposed to sun and wind and we need windbreaks and hedges. The two landslides east and west of the developed part of the garden are being planted as future romantic ravines with the deepest rooted, fastest growing native trees and shrubs we can get. Inside the garden I've been working on an evergreen hedge that faces east blocking the cold east winds and gets along aesthetically with the Italian pines and cypresses we planted about three years ago. So many classic broadleaved evergreens don't work there: bay laurel, English laurel, pittosporum; and box (B. sempervirens) is difficult to establish though good if you can get it past the first year or two. Barberries just don't look right and pyracantha is too dang thorny. Finally I've settled on Eleagnus x ebbengi, two ligustrums--small leaved hedging privet and broad-leaved 'Texensis' (I think it is)--and oriental box, B. microphylla, which seems to be somewhat more tolerant of clay and sun than the Italian box, at least when it's young. Naturally all this is small beer compared to Kaylah's tasks (don't you have any youths in the family who can be hired/blackmailed into doing some of the heavy work?), and I wish you luck with your garden!! I bet you've got some wonderful big shrubs, while most of mine are a foot tall. I'm looking forward to maturity (the garden's, not mine), and hoping I get the various bushes in the right places before they're ten feet tall.
Melissa

Wow, Melissa, what time is it there? It is 11 pm on Tuesday here. This is the time of day I rot at the computer.
Some of those Italian gardens are really beautiful with the pines and the cypresses and the old statues. And the terraces.
I've been on this place 19 years and it will never get done. I'm used to it.
It's three acres of rocks with six inches of topsoil. I garden about an acre. If I could go back in time, I would do these things:
Work from the house outward. I'm starting to move all the flowers around the house so I always have a patch of shade to work in.
Plant more native trees and local survivors, which are fir trees, birch, crabapples, aspen, willows. The ghosts of all the fancy trees are out there laughing. I have seven fir trees, though. One pussy willow. One crabapple. Three birch. One green ash.
Quit specimen gardening. I have tried everything. Last year I sent off for the seed of the Ben Franklin tree. It came right up, then languished from lack of humidity. Ditto, mountain laurel, Endless Summer hydrangea.
Make a complete windbreak of firs on the west. I was gonna. It was on my list, 19 years ago.
Quit being kind to interesting weeds, suckers, etc.
I don't think I regret anything, though. We've had a wonderful time. The kids are grown and gone and my garden slave is now an electrical engineer. He runs the pick axe when I plant roses.
The question of "What plant-Where?" is never answered. In the meantime, dig another hole, right?

Kaylah,
If you're in the Rockies time zone, as I presume, we're eight hours ahead. I love what you wrote, it's the Colorado variant of the universal gardener's experience. Our garden won't have statuary (too expensive) or terraces (ditto), but I have hopes that it can be extremely beautiful in time in a rustic, foothills-of-the-northern-Apennines kind of way. Spring is just so glorious here, and this area is absolutely wonderful for plants like lilacs and hardy old roses, all those plants that are opulent and yet that look absolutely right in humble gardens. Anyway, I'm filled with hope. I wish you a rapid arrival of spring, and happy gardening!
Melissa
P.S. I've just enrolled my eleven year old daughter in the garden brigade, with pay naturally. She needs money and she needs to start learning how to work at a job; I need someone to pull weeds. If it works out, as I think it will, she can continue and get an education in gardening. Then when she's in college and needs a part time job she can work as a gardener who actually knows something about plants and how to take care of them. She's already pretty good at distinguishing between seedlings to pull and seedlings to leave.

60 degrees tomorrow, and the snow has melted already. We shall overcome.
But what did Ann decide on for a hedge?

No decision yet. But I've got a trip to McMinnville planned. McMinnville is a major nursery area where they like to sell plants at very good prices.
So, I expect that I'll find a choice of what plant I want and a price I want to pay.

(Also, that 't' word has been taking up my time this week and this am, when I was resting my eyes outdoors, I watched a big red hornet walk up the arm of the chair I ws sitting in. He or she defecated in a most gentile way and flew away. Nature has its moments.)

Besides, it's not past cold weather here. The walnut trees tell us this as they are the old timers' proven bellweathers: when walnut leaves are out and the size of mice ears, there'll be no more freezes.

Evergreen might be tricky. American holly is evergreen, but when it drops its leaves they decompose slowly and are most definitely armed. Having said that, the berries are nice. If your winters are mild enough there are English holly cultivars you could consider as well. There are also hybrids of them all that are good growers. If you are open to deciduous hollies you must seriously consider winterberry!

Arborvitae will grow to make a decent hedge (although it's no favorite of mine since I think the winter color of the leaves is ugly - the flat needles remain on the branches but can turn quite a dull bronze). There is also red cedar (Juniperis virginiana). That's native in much of the Northeast & Mid-Atlantic. There are garden worthy cultivars of it (although if you have crabapple or apple trees growing nearby you should probably expect the trees to get cedar apple gall, a native rust disease, sooner or later - IIRC it doesn't kill or even particularly slow down red cedar, but the galls look a little odd).

You didn't indicate what height you were looking for. The privet was pretty tall, and I think Leyland Cypress also get pretty tall, yes?

Hey Ann, long time no "see". :)

I don't know if silver eleagnus (winter blooming eleagnus) is hardy in your zone but it makes a wonderful hedge. I've got it as a secondary hedge behind the leyland cypress so when that goes, there's still some privacy left. The first plants of it that I planted (gulp) 7 years ago are 10' tall now and they were only 1 gallon specimens then. I've rooted countless others since then as it's really easy to do. Stick a trimming in the ground in fall and it's taking off the next spring. A big bonus is that it blooms in late fall and smells divine.

My black bamboo is supposed to be a runner, but in 5 years, it's barely grown 4' in width. It has matured enough to reach 15' high and the canes turn black though. It's lovely! A mixture of it and some white striped passalong clumping bamboo is the basis for a future "Japanese are" if I live that long. LOL!

Another neighbor has some shorter holly planted boy/girl boy/girl in a close enough configuration that it all looks like it has red berries in winter. Only problem with it has been the invasion of the honeysuckle. Crawling around under a holly trying to get to the root of they honeysuckle is BAD job! Even on a "single point" holly! LOL!

The absolute cheapest hedge you can grow is probably cedar. The ones I planted 16 years ago on this property are now 20' tall and totally screen the neighbors on one side. They were just tiny "bird droppings" plants that I harvested from the woods at the back when I planted them. Those are probably lining your property everywhere waiting on you to either mow them down or brushkiller them.

The quick hedge would be the silver eleagnus in larger containers and plant the tiny cedars 15' away and then you'll have a 2 layer hedge with enough room to get in and weed out the blackberries and oak seedlings.

Or, there's always poke salad. It's hopeless to weed out anyway, so go with the flow and use it's invasive evil properties! :)

The eglanteria thicket across the back step and the sumac on the septic tank are gone. That bush was a nightmare. Some of the old wood at the back was as thick as my lower leg. The old man took an axe to it and he chopped it in half. It went across the ditch to be another hedge to feed the deer and keep them out. There are still 7 suckers to take out and replant. It leaves me a little short of enough to do the whole front of the yard, but one thing about eglanteria, the lord will provide.
This hedge is interspersed with the juniper scopularum which was already there(two foot babies) so someday, it's going to look......unusual. It might be great. It could happen.
It's angled from the top left to the right bottom, so in front of it goes the sumac in that triangle.
The glorious effect of scarlet sumac and orange berries in the fall ought to be pretty cool, and a real mess in spring. There can't be much worse to prune than eglanteria, and a 300 foot long hedge? Well.
The sumac make babies everywhere so I'm going to put a bark mulch around them so we don't have to mow that part.
In the rose's old hole off the back porch, I'm putting two nice sedate lilacs.
Ann's got a point. Better go see what there is to buy first. No use wishing for what ain't there.

LOL!

I can just imagine what a chore a hedge of Eglanteria & Sumac would be!!

Both are beautiful in the right situation, but I can't imagine either working well in most gardens. Sumacs (aside from the poison Sumac of course) are lovely in their rustic way, but in the East (where I grew up southwest of Philadelphia) they are roadside rustic shrubs/weeds. Eglanteria I've seen at a rose nursery & while I would dearly love to have a decent place to grow it, every time I remember it I always recall how Eglanteria immediately and always reminds me that roses are briars.

:)

I have a terrible deer problem. One time I got to thinking about it, and realized that eglanteria did two things in England: it fed the deer berries and kept them in the Lord's deer park, while keeping the people out.
Jon in England once told me that it doesn't bloom much there. He said the road workers come along and sheer it off straight.
Now, sumac is one of those plants which will put up with our weather. All the old timers used to have them. Ours are smaller than eastern sumac.
I loved them when I was a kid-I used to press the leaves. I called them monkeypaw trees because they're fuzzy.
Deer love to eat them, too. The suckers which I planted by the septic tanks like a fool are going over there in random scatterings in front of the hedge.
To tell you the truth, I'm still thinking that over.
Here's a picture of my briar hedge behind the house. It's very small. I can't figure out photobucket.

Here is a link that might be useful:

Ann, whenever I need an evergreen I go looking at evergreen viburnums. One that might work is Prague Viburnum. I checked out Dr Dirr's description of it in his viburnum book -

"it is an attractive evergreen shrub with lustrous dark green, 2-4 inch long, 1 to 1 1/2 wide elliptic leaves... the flowers are pink in bud, opening creamy white, slightly fragrant... This hybrid is extremely hardy...It survived -6F in the Arnold Arboretum without foliage discoloration...It will grow 10 feet or more and is suited to culture in zones 5 to 8. Dense full specimen at Hillier, 12 feet high and wide... The habit is upright, oval to rounded...Extremely fast growing and makes a good screen, grouping or accent plant...." pp 156-157

Good luck. Gean