It's a busy street. I need a low buffer for noise because power lines are there and Maybe a boulder garden? I am in zone 7A and salt is pushed onto the lawn in winter by the plows. Thank you.

Plants do not make an effective noise barrier -- unless you have 40 acres.

If you want more privacy, plant large evergreen shrubs where the trees were. But they won't help with noise.

New windows can help with noise if they are chosen with that in mind.

Plants can provide visual buffer but do not buffer sound, even with density. I hear traffic despite being more than a half mile through dense woodland in either direction from highways. The only thing that will buffer road sound is something solid like a wall or solid fence, neither of which would look particularly appropriate in your setting.

If you want the visual barrier to be year round it will need to be either an untrimmed fountain shaped and densely twiggy plant like forsythia or ninebark, or else evergreens like Rhododendrons or shrub sized conifers. Depending on the look you want, you can use a mix of several types of plants for a less formal look, or all the same kind for a more formal look.

Look at large shrubs as opposed to trees because of the power lines. Good on you for thinking of that issue as many folks don’t.

I don’t know what you mean by a boulder garden, but generally in the eastern half of the US, rocks are difficult to keep weeded. They tend to do better in areas that are more arid. Considering that grass appears to grow well in your area, it isn’t a choice I would be likely to make. Can you provide a photo of what you were considering?

While growing zone is one helpful piece of info in making plant suggestions, eneral location is as well (nearest big city and state). For instance, there are parts of MA, WA, VA and NM that are in zone 7, but due to different climate, moisture, and soils, different plants will grow well. Is it full sun without the trees or are there some along the edges that aren’t visible in the photo?

I actually find a tall hedge is a wonderful sound muffler along with a water feature. We lived in the inner city on a very small lot and a hedge across the front and a pond with a waterfall honestly made a huge difference in the amount of noise.

Of course this pic is from the winter. As for the part where the salt goes every winter proably some sort of dry river bed look might work to work into the boulder garden.

Moving water is excellent for camouflaging road noise, and notice that road noise is reduced in the above photo by a fence on one side.

Consider combining tall grasses with shrubs. The shrubs will take a long to fill in, whereas the grasses will get pretty large in a couple years. Id leave the grass standing over winter. Maintaining the grasses involves cutting them to the ground in the spring. You're going to need a berm for real sound reduction.

A solid fence and a row of dense evergreen shrubs should help. The pine trees have lost all of their lower branches, so they aren't helping much.

This is an effective barrier.

some ideas:

What does the power company easement have to say about vegetation, fences, berms, rocks and other things under the lines? How wide is the easement? Did they remove the trees?

Our electric company in California is getting a lot more aggressive about keeping the area near the power lines free of flammable vegetation.