Whoops - obviously I can't spell either :) Sorry for the mistakes. To think that I actually pre-read it four times is unbelievable.

Perhaps you should have left the fence up for awhile longer and planted your evergreens in front of it. BTW, how wide do your evergreens get? Maybe I misunderstood, but 2 feet onto your property does not provide much of space for expansion of the evergreens from back to front. It sounded like you provided plenty of space side to side for them.

Can you lasagna bed the whole thing? Put down 8-10 pages of damp paper, or better yet, cardboard and cover the whole area with a nice thick layer of mulch. That would keep it neat and grassless, but it is a big job. Mulching and re-mulching periodically would, however, help get the area ready for planting when you are ready to do it.

Much as I hate using the stuff, this might be an area for landscape fabric. Use something like Round-up to kill off the remaining grass, put down the landscape fabric, and a thing layer of mulch on top. Renew mulch & respray with Round-up periodically to get rid of any weeds or plant overgrowth from your neighbor.

Perhaps you local community provides free wood chips/mulch that you could use, or maybe you could do a section at a time. BTW, there is nothing wrong with leaving grass around the trees, but if you think that your neighbor will start planting around them, then you might be better off mulching the area (where you can quietly go in and occasionally Round-up any green stuff encroaching on your property).

If you want to plant between the trees, plant woodlanders that the trees will eventually just bury - ferns, mayapples, mertensia, celandine poppies and things like that. They'll spread where they can and die off when the trees expand.

DH read my post and said there is 8 to 9 feet from the trees to the driveway. I guess I was a little off. That should accommodate the 15 feet spread adequately according to the websites I've read.

Leslie, I really like the mulch idea. Do you think it would look funny having mulch all by the trees and then a three foot grassy strip along side her driveway?

I think the grass strip along her drive would be fine. Grass sets off garden beds quite nicely. If your neighbor already has grass on the outside edge of her driveway, it also makes good sense (probably neater & easier to cut) to make a few feet of your area also grass. If you keep the grass area to 3-4 feet total of her property and yours, I would think that would discourage any attempt by here to plant the area. Just make sure it's easy to get the mower through. Also be prepared to fight the encroaching grass, but that is true of any garden bed.

Best wishes.
Leslie

I would definitely give the neighbor a clear visual boundary. Personally, I would put in a border of some kind at the property line, such as brick, stones, pavestone, etc., then mulch the entire area from the border in to your property. As for the small grass strip that will be left between the property line and the neighbors driveway, well, it's hers to do with what she wants, but at least she'll have that clear visual boundary so she doesn't (hopefully) "cross the line".

Daisy, yes that may also be an advantage to put up something like a border with the mulch. Maybe those pavers that people use to build walls would work well. They are not too tall and would give her a clean line for mulch not to fall into her yard. Later when the trees grow, they'll cover them up and I can dig them up and move them somewhere else.

Thanks for the idea!

I would just mow right up to your property line until the trees fill it in. If she plants something there, mow it.