I inherited an oleander hedge creating a privacy hedge for my front yard in Phoenix, AZ. Laughs at the sun. SUPERB privacy and acoustic barrier. I keep mine about six feet high, but can easily be grown to amazing thirty feet tall "walls" around here. I do get irrigation so I cannot speak to how often you must water it as I never do except for 18 irrigations a year, but the thick waxy coated leaves speak to a plant that conserves water. Pretty red, pink or white flowers or combine them alternating throughout your hedge. Few pests. Birds like to duck in and out of them. Downsides: Hard to get rid of if you change your mind. Need to be dug out 6 feet down. Whole plant poisonous. Generally don't eat it but since it tastes bad anyway not usually a problem. When cutting during maintenance the latex sap can irritate some people's skin. Occasionally, like once a year, I find a wasp's nest in them.

The plants typically used for screening - trees (often evergreen) and large shrubs - never really stop growing. And fast growing trees never really stop growing rather rapidly :-) So that 6-8 footer at the nursery could eventually be 35' or more in height and almost as wide. IOW, they get BIG!! In fact, the only difference between a "dwarf" conifer and a regular sized one is rate of growth.........if conditions are right, eventually that dwarf could become much larger than what is typical on the tags and in literature. For example. it is not unusual to see a dwarf Alberta spruce, normally a tiny little thing around a foot or so tall at the nursery, grow to be 12-15' tall in time and with a significant spread. Also, many fast growing trees display unfavorable growth characteristics like weak wood, invasive root systems and malformed branch angles that shorten their lifespans and create garden liabilities. This is a pretty well recognized phenomenon and I'm pretty sure that was what was meant by being "garden gorillas"! btw, there are also very cold hardy forms of clumping bamboo - any of the Fargesia species - that can achieve significant height yet do not spread aggressively. They are more like very large ornamental grasses with a slowly enlarging base and require no root barrier or rhizome control :-)

Hello. The only one I know of that would work for your situation is Golden Goddess (Latin name Bambusa multiplex "Golden Goddess"). It gets about 12 feet tall and grows in a loose, open clump, meaning that a new shoot may come up a foot or so away from the main clump. So it's not a tight clumper but fairly well mannered. Make sure you don't get "Golden" (Latin name Phylostachys aurea) by mistake. There is another type in the Thamnocalamus group that would work but it is harder to find. I don't remember the species name. I would recommend asking your question to Bamboo Headquarters nursery in So. Cal. They grow hundreds of types ando deliver also.

I have a mixed shrub bed that is probably 15’ x 60’ and am in a similar zone. If you want arborvitae or Rhodies, just plan to spray with a deer repellent. Some are oil based and some can be mixed with a substance like Wiltpruf to prevent it washing off so that it only has to be renewed every few months unless there is new growth. I second the comment about blue spruce not being worth a long term planting in the humid east. Mine after 10 years are bare on the bottom and losing needles and shoots on the top, so I will take them out in the next few years. My preference is for having a rhythm of repeated characteristic plants down the length of the bed rather than clumps of one kind, and then I fill with variety. Here is a thread where about half way down I added a couple of posts with photos and an explanation of my plan and goals, so rather than rewriting the whole thing, I am sending you to the link. https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/3113384/shrubs-for-privacy-along-a-fence#n=22 I have listed plants I used and even after 10 years I am generally pleased. Some plants have not done well (Pieris and Cornus are much beloved by the voles and don’t live long without roots) and as mentioned above, the blue spruce are disease prone. By now many of my groundcovers and perennials have been shaded out. Right now it needs editing, but I have spent the last year dealing with a terminally ill family member, and it has done surprisingly well with quite literally no maintenance. I will do some editing this fall when it is a bit cooler, and if you can find dwarf versions of other evergreens that are less popular with deer if you don’t want to spray, that would be good. My Norway spruce which isn’t in my shrub border, while lovely, at something like 25-30 years, it is huge, perhaps 25’-30’ wide and well over twice that tall. So if you want to use a spruce, look for ones that grow more slowly. For instance, there is a slow growing version of Serbian spruce/Picea omorika as well as one that looks bluish, so look for those. I went to all the nurseries in my rural area and chose from what was available that suited my needs since I wanted somewhat larger starting plants. One of the fastest growing plants I put in were panicled hydrangeas, and between their ability to gain size quickly, their need for little attention after the first year or two, and their months long bloom, I would use these again in any similar garden. I deliberately used more than one color and texture of evergreen for winter interest, particularly during the long fall and early spring when there isn’t snow. My cover photo shows a piece of it during this stage if you click on my name. If you have questions, feel free to ask.