Heavy, maybe, but I doubt you could beat the deer load in Fairfield Co. CT! I have an 8' heavy duty mesh fence. Not the thin wimpy stuff. I've had trees fall on it, the trees cut and removed, and the fence pretty much springs back into place. Maybe a bit of tightening of the top lead, but that's it. Now, some small creature has gotten it, by cutting away small sections along the bottom, but it's easy enough to repair with the hog ringer. I should note that the fence is attached to trees wherever possible (makes it less visible) and is staked all along the bottom. Before the bottom was staked, the deer did wiggle under. So, technically the fence is about 7.5' tall, since there's the 6" or so staking allowance at the bottom. I was a bit concerned they'd be able to jump it with a heavy snow crust and a lot of snow, but they did not. I think, after awhile, they just gave up on the area.

I saw something on PBS about the gardens in Key West and there was one of those big old historic houses with the huge front porch, kind of sitting up high from the ground. Right in front of and all along the porch were a bunch of Rhaphis Palms (Lady Palm) and it was just stunning, yet so simple. If you didn't like the lower growing fronds, you could clip them as the palms got higher.

I think we have the same people living next door - and it is their way or the highway. Shrubs won't work - we tried that. 2.47 feet of THEIR laneway belongs to us - it is not a right of way. Yet they still park on our grass and put all of their cr@p against our house, have loud parties etc. Re calling the police - they will not get involved where we live. Before you do anything check out the zoning and who owns what and what you can legally do. You might have a problem putting a fence down your property line at the front. If we were to do it we would have to "give" them our 2.47 ft. and put the fence on our lawn - good side facing them. A written agreement would have to be signed by both parties - I have no doubt they would sign it. If you put a thorny bush they would complain about injury. It does make it very hard to cut the lawn, do basic maintenance etc. In addition to their regular laneway they also have an illegal parking pad, but with 3 SUVs and a sedan - they park wherever they want. Of course 2.47 ft. of our other neighbour's laneway belongs to them and we do not abuse it. We have a narrow car. Of course it is impossible to get out of the car without stepping on their part but we do not park on their grass - ever - and when we redid the laneway I made very sure that precautions were taken so that none of the asphalt touched their house. We paid the full cost as do all of the other people on the street. I wonder what will happen when they do their laneway - we are not giving them one red cent. Of course the other size damaged our brand new eavestroughs to just under our insurance deductible (but if we made an insurance claim we would have had to pay anyway and our monthly payments would have gone up). We live in a no fault province - no fault accident, no fault insurance etc. We are responsible for the first $25,000 of damage they could cause. They could have had the damage fixed for under $50 when they did their eavestroughs and my husband believed them - as usual he was wrong. I have pictures but they are useless. You can bet that if we tried something illegal they would report us fast. I hope you can get this settled and you don't live in a place like ours. The people on our street aren't particularly friendly with each other except for the normal little cliques, but all are united on one thing - no one wants to live where we do.

You have to be really careful about making "fast-growing" a criteria by which to select plants because with many trees and shrubs, fast-growing tends to equate to weaker plants that are fast-dying. That's just reality. I'd aim for moderate growers that aren't going to die about the time they reach a decent size. I'm going to guess that by a landscaped island, she meant perhaps a slightly elevated berm of soil with plants planted into the berm. If you have a berm that is, let's say 18-24" tall, and then you plant young plants that are a foot or two tall, you'll have the added height of the berm to help block sound and provide privacy right from the start. Some people who live a few miles from us didn't like the view from their rural front yard so they put up a berm of earth that is 4-6' tall and then planted native prairie plants, including shrubs, grasses and trees on top of it. They had instant privacy from the start thanks to their tall berm, and then it has gotten even better over time as the plants mature. The height of their berm is excessive, but I guess they really hated the view and wanted to block it right from the start, which they did. A mixed planting usually is much more attractive than a single row of shrubs lined up like soldiers. It looks more attractive and is healthier too. When you have a monoculture, if disease strikes, it can move right down the line of identical plants, killing them as it goes. With a polyculture, that is less likely to occur. I'm going to link the website of Sooner Plant Farm for you because they have wonderful photos and thorough descriptions of everything they carry. It is great as a reference whether you intend to buy their plants or not. I often go to their website and browse it when trying to find a particular plant for a particular situation. The only problem with going to their website is that it makes you want to buy a lot of plants. One of the fastest growing plants we have here at our house is Chaste Tree (Vitex agnus castus). It is a tree that grows very wide, more like a shrub, and it grows both upward and outward very quickly. Ours is about 15 years old. If you find your chaste tree growing too tall, you can prune it back off very low to the ground and it will regrow in no time at all. It is not evergreen, but it would look very pretty in a mixed planting, and it flowers in the summer month. Canna lilies come in various heights and are fast growing, but also are not evergreen. They can get tall and dense relatively quickly. Mine usually are 6-8' tall by June of a typical year. Remember, too, to choose plants that are tolerant of whatever soil you have. If you have well-drained soil, you can plant almost anything, but if you have heavy, dense clay soil, you need to select plants that tolerate a slower-draining soil. Sooner Plant Farm