Welcome aboard Drewsin.

In general I like your plan. Tulip Poplars are one of my favorites.

More particulars are needed though.

Where the heck are you first of all?

What is the area they are being planted in like? Wet bottom of a hill? Dry spot? Is there a sidewalk to deal with? Tulip Poplars get rather large here. Their trunks need room.

Also, plan the line of sight from your driveway.

Oh, and lets go for more variety in your plantings. That way if something in the weather one year or some bug comes along that specializes in Hackberrys or Liriodendron tulipifera has a good year you don't loose everything or have an odd bare spot.

I take it that overhead utilities are not a problem.

Diversification is a good idea. After all, look what happened to streets lined in American elms. Tulip tree is beautiful, but does best in moist, rich soil. I personally don't really care for hackberries - they have dull foliage, and don't turn very nice in the fall. Granted, they do take some pretty harsh conditions. There are prettier trees. I especially like Kentucky coffee-tree and Yellow Buckeye, though there are many, many more trees to choose from.

I live in Eastern Washington, which is much much different from Western Washington. I technically live in a desert. All of our seasons are very distinct. Springtime brings alot of wind, with gusts into the 40 mph range and rarely higher. Summer makes its way into the low 100's a few times a year, but usually in the 90's. Winter's are my main concern. We dip down into the negative numbers on occasion, but not sure we did this last winter. The Kentucky coffee tree looks nice but I'd prefer a tree that didn't leave alot of large seeds or pods, which is why I kind of like the look of the Hackberry. My soil is dark and rich and the water table, for being in a desert, is really high. All of the plants in the neighborhood where I will be building are large and do very well. I have tons of room to work with as well.

Your water table may be unnaturally high due to widespread irrigation.

In any case, do Tulip Poplars really do well there? I've never seen them in my version of the western desert, but that might mean they've just never been tried.

I would naturally lean towards a western species. A tall pine like Ponderosa.

Lord. Cottonwood Cottonwood Cottonwood all over high dry Colorado. Which I consider odd for what dominates damper areas here.

Denver Botanical Gardens also had a good selection of Crab Apples.......

Trying to think of more....

We have cottonwoods all over the place here and they are terrible on allergies. I haven't found a single person that can honestly say they like them.
Our water table is unusually high and it is mostly due to irrigation. I don't know of any tulip trees around but it might just be that no one has tried them here. Everything that I've read about them makes me think they would thrive here.

I have no clue what trees your local experts would suggest, but on this side of the Mississippi, I like to think a row of trees should be as diverse as possible to mitigate risk of some sort of total loss.

Examples to my local area:

- wind bursts split multiple mature flowering pear trees (Bradford, Callery) breaking the design once the damaged trees are removed.

- insects infest a well groomed, non-diverse, tree lined area and before the developer / responsible party can react, many trees are lost, breaking the design

- a severe drought (like the one now in some southern and south eastern states) appears to select out a species that was marginal for the climate to begin with and remove them with great accuracy (over in central GA for example, the flowering cherry trees that drive a festival each year have serious problems with drought stress when other selections fair much better / live with less resources expended)

Best luck and you are lucky to have an opportunity to plant with lots of room for creativity!

PS. My idea would be to check into the Dawn Redwood as a candidate. A few of them in your line would be quite majestic, I think, provided they are well-suited to your location.

Down to your south in the high desert of northern Nevada (Elko), there are essentially two species of broadleaf deciduous trees which are widely planted: Cottonwood and Siberian Elm. Guess which one I like better?

This a design question long before it is a discussion of individual species/cultivars. Somewhere in this discussion attention must be payed to A) What are you trying to achieve? and B) Can your idea of alternating tall and short-growing trees provide you with this? One thing jumps right out though-those tall-growing trees will quite likely quickly overtop the shorter ones. Will the shorter ones then still be able to develop properly, or will their growth always be distorted as they reach around for sunlight. Or will they be somehow less than they should be because they're shaded out.

One thing to keep in mind-one of the main means by which tall-growing species become tall is by growing fast. White pines, redwoods, silver maples, American elms-all fast growers. What could have been a decent flowering crab will never reach its potential if planted right next to a silver maple.....or a tulip tree, just for an example.

+oM

Agree with +OM. It is better to clump the big trees together and the small tree together - 3-7 of one size and then 3-7 of another for example. Grouping the same species together accentuates their effect.
Reading this it is not clear what you are trying to achieve with your planting, or if you have a preference for shade or screening or flowering or evergreen or fall color, etc. Clarify some more if you can.
Hackberry is one of the five "universal" trees that grow almost anywhere in North America. It is tough and resilient but often short-lived and trashy. Provides food for birds, and if trimmed, can make a reasonable nice tree. I would not normally choose to plant it, however a variety of it grows wild down here and the shade and berries are appreciated (well sometimes).
Bur Oak and Eastern Red Cedar are two other "universal" trees that offer more quality than Hackberry and would perhaps be a better choice.

Thanks to everyone who has followed up to my original question/thought. Im not really sure what "look" I am going for either. My driveway will eventually butt right up to the property line, so I have a full 225 feet to work with. I would like a variety of trees that will kind of all look their best at different times of the year, if that makes sense. I would prefer to have the trees in a straight line or slightly staggered to cut down on the mowing time. I am also needing something that is rather fast growing. I won't be building a house for a couple more years but would like to get the trees growing well before then so they can get established and help in increasing the property value.