45 feet ... oh hi... WELCOME to GW ... in your post.. next to your name.. it says NONE .. go to your members page.. and change that to something like Z7 NJ .... because if you come back often.. it will always be the first question ... next.. a pic would tell a thousand words... if you can learn how.. post one ... 45 feet to the lot line.. is NOT a lot of space.. for many things that get tall ... especially in the conifer world ... one thing i suggest often is Thuja occidentalis DE GROOT'S SPIRE .. mine is going on 12 feet tall.. and barely 2 feet wide.. saves you a lot of yard ... and they grow 12 to 18 inches per season ... see link.. and note the ones that have 2 leaders ... yuck you would have to demand single leader trees ... but if you get this far.. come over to the conifer forum.. and ask why ... the alternative to conifers.. would be shrubs .... most of us hang in both forums ..... so its of little use to tell you to go over there ... but i cant think of a lot of evergreen trees .... and that is why i suggest conifers ... or shrubs ... learning the terms.. is how you start on your quest ... to ID what is available ... good luck ken ps: you stole my joke with your last line ... Here is a link that might be useful: link

I may check to see how much they cost in 24 inch box size and see if the extra money will be worth cutting a few years off the wait wait for privacy.. ===>>> there MIGHT BE some faulty logic there .. it is said.. that the larger the transplant ... the harder to transplant.. and the longer to get established and get moving to specs .. as compared to a smaller transplant.. that barely knows it transplanted.. and takes off ... wait for it.. like a sky rocket.. and outgrows the larger transplant in a 5 year period ... not to mention.. the 'box' itself indicates a ball and burlap digging.. which can be a risk .... [a box is really hard burlap] .... the point is that a mature specimen is dug out of a field ,... if you insist... how about an experiment for us ... lets say you need 6 ... buy 3 big.. and 3 smaller ... and take the history in pix.. and every year.. report back.. and prove this theory.. right or wrong ... in other words.. you speak of the cost/benefit ratio as to buying larger ... and i am suggesting the cost for larger ... may actually be a negative to vigor... and faster result.. in a 3 to 5 year period .... [with the caveat, of course.. that i am not familiar with CA at all] .. might be the smaller .... your posts frustrate me ... on some level ... because we are talking about conifers/trees... and with trees we talk about decades of life .... but you want instant gratification ... and that dichotomy .. well.. frustrates me ... i wish you all the luck in the world .... but make the right choice for the long haul .... and i think you will end up happier .... ken ps: in my z5 MI ... for whats its worth ... i have gotten rid of all my upright tall juniper.. if not for snow/ice load [of which .. that is not an issue with you] ... and juniper tip blight .... call your county extension office and find out if that is an issue in your county [ask for odds, rather than possibility] ... if so ... i would tell you to skip juniper, in this application ...

What I've seen called "mixed hedges" in print were sheared hedges with active mixtures of leaf colors producing a calico effect. And hedges usually are linear. And very closely planted from the start. What you have is more like mixed border planting, with a grouping of this and a grouping of that. In an informal, flowing shape bed these would be drifts. This is why the trees being in a straight line is bothersome, it doesn't jibe with them having been placed in sets of several of each kind. And there is a considerable height differential between the Nootka cypress and the others. A good method is to choose shrubs that you expect to grow about 1 1/2 times as tall as the bed or other defined space they occupy is wide. Much beyond that and plantings can appear too tall. Your Nootka cypresses for instance, in this particular case. In time these will grow as big as the native conifers behind the houses in the last picture anyway. Not just too tall for the bed, but too wide. One I've mentioned that was bought as 'Pendula', planted at the entrance to my place shot right up and was soon hanging out over the street, left behind a stump about 18 in. across when I had it cut down awhile back.

Makes sense with American Chestnut but I imagine once First Nations people established in eastern North America, there was a fair bit of assisted migration occurring with edible nut trees. There is excellent evidence of that with Shagbark Hickory in southeastern & southern Ontario. The official species range does not reflect this but there are two outlier northern wild/naturalized populations of Shagbark Hickory 80-100 miles north of the eastern end of Lake Ontario (Lanark & Ottawa) and the same at the western end of Lake Ontario (Midland) but the species did not completely wrap around Lake Ontario to meet midway along the northern shore of the lake. A hypothesis is that First Nations people carried them north along the main north-south routes (seasonal migrations) and planted them at far north as they would grow to provide food in preparation for the migration back south.