Sally, Well, the Eastern Red Cedars are fast growing at our house. I'm in an area of mixed grasslands/post oak-hickory forests and the Eastern Red Cedars grow like mad here, even in poor, dense, red clay soil and periods of frequent summer drought. They are so invasive here that we spend an inordinate amount of time removing them because they pop up everywhere and grow like mad. One day they're small and you're thinking "I need to cut down that sucker" and the next thing you know, it is 3', 4' or 5' tall and you're wondering how that happened! Because of our frequent grassfires/wildfires here, we have cut down and removed every cedar tree on our property that is within 100 yards of the house. When they burn, they can explode and send burning sap/resin flying from the air and that burning sap stuff ignites new fires wherever it lands. In your part of OK, there is not a serious, ongoing grassfire or wildfire issue like we have here in southcentral OK many years so cedars wouldn't be as big of a fire threat there as they are here. You probably noticed I didn't mention red-tippped photinias which, as I'm sure you know, are very overused in north central Texas and also plagued by disease. I don't see many of them here in our very rural part of OK, but they might be a possibility for your new place too if you like them. We had them in Fort Worth in the 1980s and they grew like mad, giving us a nice privacy hedge in about 7 years from small one-gallon plants. However, in northeastern OK, there generally is a lot of humidity most years so the fungal diseases that plague photinias in Texas might be a problem for them in NE OK. I have seen a few old Chinese Photinias here and they are beautiful and healthy although not always easy to find in stores. I generally recommend mixed hedges too, and still would stick more with hollies than with cedars if I were putting in a screening hedge and didn't mind waiting a couple years longer for the shrubs to get nice and big. My hollies, which are Burford hollies, are more slow-growing than cedars. I think it has taken them about 8 or 9 years to reach about 12-15' in height, but that is in dense, Red River-type clay soil. In better soil, they might be more fast-growing. I am not sure how quickly you're expecting your privacy screen to grow, hence, the cedar tree recommendation. If I were trying to put in a screening hedge here, I'd likely mix deciduous trees (assuming a power line isn't a issue where the border or hedge will be) with shrubs and perennials for a much more interesting look. However, if doing that, I'd expect slower growth and would have to resign myself to looking at the unsightly area next door for a bit longer. Sally, there's a book or two with some Oklahoma natives, and I think you'll be surprised to see how many of the plants in it are also in Sally W.'s books. Of course, there are several geographic regions in OK that vary wildly from one another (just like in Texas) so some of the OK natives are more for western OK. I'll try to find and link info about at least one of those books. There are not a great many books specifically about gardening in Oklahoma. Many of the regional gardening books in bookstores here in southern OK are the some ones you'll see in Texas---Neil Sperry, Howard Garrett, etc. I don't know if that is true in the rest of the state, but it certainly is true in southern OK. In your part of the state, with its usually abundant rainfall (notwithstanding the horrid drought in that area this spring and summer) and great soil (in most places), I think you'll find that many plants grow incredibly well there and you'll probably see faster growth than you're used to seeing in the Dallas area, which is somewhat more rainfall-challenged. A lot of the gardeners in NE OK grow lovely plants, like hydrangeas, that I can't grow in southern OK because we have so many recurring droughts here in this part of the state. In my part of the state, the most popular natives for borders or hedges seem to be Eastern Red Cedar, oak trees, trumpet creeper vines and plum trees (the small thicket-forming types). Someone near Thackerville has a trumpet creeper vine hedge that runs along a fence line and it is about 150' long and about 8' tall and is beautiful, but it isn't tall enough to fully screen off a bad view and it isn't evergreen. Possomhaw hollies are also abundant in my part of the state, but they're also deciduous. I suspect you can grow a much wider variety of plants in NE OK than we can in southern OK. Probably the most popular non-native in southern OK is the holly family. I am out in a very rural area, though, where not many people plant a screening hedge because we're so far apart from one another that we can't see each other's houses and a privacy screen isn't that essential. Here in southern OK, what passes for privacy screening is just the native plants that grow up along the fencelines, so that means lots of thicket plums, rough-leaved dogwoods (which are more a shrub than a tree here), shining sumac, smooth sumac, greenbrier, trumpet creeper vine, blackberries, winged elm, cedar elm, redbuds, American beautyberry, persimmon, poison ivy, osage orange, western hackberry, several kinds of ash, Kentucky Coffee tree, pepper vine (ampelopsis), black cherry, chokecherry, virginia creeper and several native grapes. So, in areas where the birds have planted a fenceline, all you have to do is engage in selective pruning to turn a messy fenceline row into a lovely, mixed hedge of native plants and when folks here do that, they tend to eventually end up with a hedge of Eastern Red Cedar because it eventually outgrows everything else. I don't think either of Steve Dobbs books focus exclusively on native plants, but both include many natives. I've linked one below, and the other one is referenced on the linked page too. Other than the books by Steve Dobbs, the books that I've used most since moving here are two small books by Doyle McCoy called "Roadside Trees and Shrubs of Oklahoma" and "Roadside Wild Fruits of Oklahoma". Really, though, I use my Texas gardening books as much as I use the Oklahoma ones. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Oklahoma Gardener's Guide

Hello Everyone, Since the scope of the listing of unstoppable Texas plants was so broad, I thought I would narrow it down to just super tough plants that add fragrance to your garden! My limited personal experience only consists of a few plants, and they only produce fragrance for only a part of a season (I have parts of the year that I need to fill with fragrance)! Hopefully you all can help me expand my garden so that at least I can have something to walk by at any time of the year and have something nice to smell! Here is my listing of what I know: Lady Banks - My white one actually has some fragrance to it, although it isn't as nice of a smell as some of the other flowers, it does have fragrance. This is a springtime blooming/fragrance plant. Wisteria - Again, another super tough plant, but only blooms and has fragrance in the spring. (BWT, my 5 gal plant that I got last year seems to only produce leaves, but no flowers/fragrance! Did I get a lemon, or does it have to mature more?) Violet Lantana - I was surprised late last summer(maybe even fall?) last year when I walked by my light purple lantana and couldn't figure out where the nice smell was coming from! I had a mental block thinking that Lantanas only produced nice looking flowers! Copper Canyon Daisy - This plant actually has more of an herb fragrance when the wind blows through it, but it does produce fragrance all year (well, actually, I always cut mine back every year, and it takes a few months for it to grow back enough to have enough leaves to create fragrance!) Texas Mountain Laurel - I learned of this one from the FW BG, so I bought a couple 1 gals, but it looks like it is going to take forever for it to get big enough to bloom and produce flowers/fragrance! It is tough and evergreen, but it only seems to produce fragrance in the spring as well. Does anyone have any suggestions for fragrance the whole year round? Even having different plants with different fragrances at different times would be nice too! Here is a link that might be useful: Listing of Texas Super Tough UnStoppable Plants!

Without doubt, I would go with Vetiver Grass "Vetiveria zizanioides". "Vetiver is a clumping type grass, non-invasive. The roots are very deep, so it's best to decide carefully where to plant it because it is very hard to dig up. It can be grown in a container as well, for a lovely effect. In 1989 Fort Polk in Louisiana was having a problem with erosion. Three scenic streams came together on the base, but tanks and other military equipment was ripping up the land and causing soil and silt to fill up the natural waterways. Mike Materne, the local U.S. Soil Conservation Service agent, brought in some vetiver plants and planted them in the bare slopes above the dams that held runoff water. In spite of the very acidic, rocky soil that contained virtually no fertility, the slips of grass began to grow. In eight weeks, some were almost 2 meters tall and in 10 weeks they had grown together into hedges. Sediment began to build up behind the hedges and the water that went down the streams into the catch ponds became clear. It soon became clear that vetiver was acting as much more than an erosion trap: it was a "nurse plant" that was protecting other species and thereby giving these devastated watersheds a chance to heal themselves. Native grasses, wildflowers, shrubs, trees and vines came crowding in behind the hedges and grew to re-vegetate the site."

Thanks, Katherine! Bostedo, I’m pretty sure all my yellows are New Gold (not sure what my white ones in the back are). I had planned to keep a folder with it all written down, tags, etc, because I was getting so many plants, but of course forgot to! Same as you — my experiences with Lantana haven’t always been good, but these are all very happy for whatever reason. They all get a lot of sun and heat, I’ve never had luck with previous ones getting too much shade. And I’ve had better luck with ones I get from my local nursery, rather than big box stores. These current ones were in 4 inch pots, with just a couple of long stems, and have really taken off fast. Oh, that Pampas. That pic is one I got off google, several years old. When we looked at the house for the first time, they scraped our car on both sides, and I thought ... oh, boy. These are gone first thing if we move here. It was winter, so our yard and several neighbors’ yards had shedded blades blowing everywhere. They were much bigger than that pic, I’m kicking myself for not standing back in the street to take a pic before they were cut down. Amazingly, they were cut to the ground only ... not dug up or poisoned ... and I’ve not seen a shoot yet! But trying to dig holes for my new plants was a nightmare experience, like trying to dig through wire mesh. I had some at the last house, but far away from anything. I can’t fathom someone thinking that would be a good spot for them. It was sad, though, the guy cutting them down accidentally cut a baby King snake in half, that had been sheltering under them. Poor thing. :( He was the second guy, the first one didn’t finish, said he’d be back, never showed. :D