The soil you mention isn't the best for fast growth. At least it sounds like there is some black loamy stuff on top of the clay. But clay soil makes for slow growing in everything except ornamental grasses.

The low light levels you mention are also not great for fast growth. Lots of things will grow in the light levels that azaleas grow in - but few will be what you would call 'rapid'.

There are a few things that grow well in the conditions you mention but the first one that comes to mind is bald cypress - a native. There are some named cultivars out there in the trade (I think some have gold casts to the leaves and others are smaller growing, which is what you want. Regular cypress get huge so a mini one is more like 30 feet.) Anyway the best way to solve this problem is to plant container grown trees as big as you can afford to buy. You would only need 5 at the most and you can plant container grown plants at any time of the year. Check the labels to see maximum height. Uplighting bald cypress is very impressive. They are a conifer (think pine tree) but they loose their needles in the winter. Some people like their fall color - a kinda muddy red brown.

I'm not a tree expert so you will want to talk to more people about choices. There are places on the outskirts of Raleigh where you could buy them very cheap but you would need a crew handy to help you load them and a truck to haul them in. But the prices would be about half what you'll find at Home Depot and about a third of what you will find at a garden center - but those sorts of places will also plant the trees for you which can be a plus.

I do not know much about this but have you looked into some type of magnolia? There is a smaller type (sweet bay?) but I don't know the light requirements.

Wax myrtle might be an option. However, although wax myrtle can be very dense and bushy in full sun, they tend to be small open trees in shade. They have beautiful silvery bark. A lot of people don't like them because they can grow TOO well, but that's in a garden environment -- it sounds like in this situation runners and fast growth is what you want. Wax myrtles like it wet and don't mind poor soil. The females produce blue berries that wax myrtles love, so they're always full of birds in the winter.

I have to agree with T'John that part shade won't give the very rapid growth you want, so you may be out big bucks to get bigger trees to start with.

The magnolia, unless you paid for big ones, would be slow growing, esp. in shade - they mostly like sun, so may not do well at all in mostly shade. The sweet bay, M. virginiana, does OK with shade. Height might be iffy too - you would have to pick a cultivar carefully.

Again, you would have to chose carefully, since they are shrubby when young and might need limbing up, but a vibunum of one kind or other shouldn't get too tall, and will flower. I don't know about fall color.

Redbud, a native, would do, maybe as a mix of the green-leaved and the purple-leaved-in-spring-and-early summer Forest Pansy, to give early spring flowers. Franklinia is another native possibility, and would give summer flowers, but might end up too tall. Davidia, while possibly hard to find, is another summer-flowering tree, and Carolina Silver Bell (also native) is another spring flowering. Service berry or Juneberry (Amelanchier) is another native with spring flowers. Mayhaw would give flowers and berries, and is another native. And one or another of the clumping bamboos might be a thought.

Hope this list gives you a few to look up and think about.

Thank you everyone for the information. This helps me a great deal.

It sounds like based on my soil and shade - any plant I put back there will probably not grow to its full potential.

So perhaps what I should do is get a tree with a maximum height of 30 - 40 feet and it may hit 15 to 20 feet given the less than ideal conditions.

Does that make any sense.

In shade plants tend to not necessarily be stunted but grow tall and skinny, and not screen well unless you have a bunch of them. I'd still get a plant that should get the height that you want if the height really matters.

There are plenty of small trees (12-20 feet tall) that have interesting limbs (good for uplighting) that can handle your conditions but you'll need to buy them pretty much already the size you need because you are barely gonna notice any growth. You only need four or five and you can find them less then $50 each if you load and haul yourself.

If it were my yard I would make it a row of all the same species, limb them up for drama with the uplighting, not plan on lots of flowers due to the shade and watch for drainage problems.

Alicia is right - lack of light tends to make plants get taller to try to get to it. Go with a plant that does well in shade, and one that will mature at about the height you want. Mature height is always approximate, but rarely too much taller than what is written - it can be under, depending on circumstances.

A tree planted in the woods will tend to grow taller and skinnier than that same tree would be planted out in an open field, so it's all relative - you can only go by the probabilities. That's one reason why heights are given as a range and not as an absolute. If only one number is given, then that's probably the maximum height to be expected.

Thanks for all the advice. I like the idea of buying a more mature tree - but moving it could be an issue depending on size.

I have a trailer and plan to head out to Broadwell's this weekend - is their selection going to be good enough for what I need - or is there a better place?

try broadwell's first and if they don't have what you want check across from them at old stage. they carry more stuff, but it's a little more expensive, so it's always smart to start with broadwell's. don't expect to find anything really oout of the norm at either one. good luck!

OK,

So I visited Broadwell's over the weekend and they did not have any of the trees recommended above in a decent size - other than just a normal RedBud - which we are not particularly fond of.

I was wondering if a White Flowering Dogwood would be a reasonable tree for what we need. I know it has a limited screening ability - but it seems like it may work.

Any thoughts? Also, how close can I plant these together without causing one tree to impede the growth of another - so the limbs get nice and full?

Thanks for all the help