This is a long thread I just stumbled upon so I didn't do my due diligence and read through all the comments to see if my recommendation was already suggested so please forgive me if it was. I would plant 'American Pillar' Arborvitae along the entire fence line and give it a couple of years. It's cheap (I found them for $7.50 a pop for an order of 100 plants last year), narrow (3-foot at base when mature), tall (30-foot max), fast (3-foot per year, once established), densely evergreen (no see through branches), cold hardy (to zone 3), disease free and long lived (no known problems with a lifespan of it's ancestors measured in centuries). What more can one ask for? Here is a link that might be useful: American Pillar Arborvitae

Sorry; I was wrong about thinking that the Corintian Rose and Mauve cultivars as being new developments. Did some checking and now realize that a few years after more nurseries began offering the Ornamental trees, I must have seen a photo of the Corintian Rose which appeared to bloom more red colored. But the latest photos I have seen of the Corintian Rose seem to reveal that tree's blooms being more true to what reported descriptions of it have been turning up. Dr. Dennis Werner had successfully developed these Corinthian peach cultivars, and reports of them started showing up in web perspectives back over the winter of 1998-99. Those perspectives projected that nurseries would be making these trees available by the winter of 1999-2000. I have not seen the standard nurseries in my area offering these trees, but after I inquired about them to my favorite nursery on the northwest edge of town. They fairly easily found some being offered to the wholesale markets from a local regional grower. My extra research about the development of the different cultivars has reminded me of what I had obviously forgotten when I posted what I replied above. The truth is that Back in the winter of 1998-99; the cultivars which had already been developed were Corinthian, White, Corinthian Pink, Corintihian Rose, and Corinthian Mauve. With the Rose and the Mauve cultivars just now showing up more often on various web sites, must mean that now those cultivars are catching the eye of people more than the White and Pink cultvars are right now. One thing I do know is that the photos on the web of these trees do not capture the dynamic beauty that one is surprised to see in any of these trees that are thriving out in their planting beds. Must be something about the camera shots being so far away that the size and shapes of the flowers appear more non-descript in the photo's and also the amazing way that the sun make the colors of those flowers to appear so stunning must be an aspect that the camera's missed capturing in those photos of these trees that I have been more recently seeing on the Web. I know that the Pink cultivar blooms certainly are such, simply because a friend of mine planted four of these trees along the narrow strip along her front driveway and that boarders her neighbor's yard. The first Spring that her trees burst out in bloom, her husband who never seems to say much about the items at her house that we have planted, well even he, was taken aback at the sight of how stunning those blooms were. At first sight he rushed to get his camera and quicky attached that photo to an email and sent it to me to let me know how amazed he was at first sight of those tree tree's bloom. That was 3 years ago, and the only other item he has reacted the same about was after he first saw blooms, on the hardy, Blue Satin Hibiscus that I had trained up in a tree form and helped my friend plant at her house. Those clear blue...

The horror stories are a result of people who put in bamboo, don't maintain it, and then blame it on the bamboo 10 years later. You can control bamboo with a procedure called rhizome (root) pruning. However, it must be practiced once or twice a year if you want to keep things well-controlled. For your situation, probably the best solutions are: 1) Plant clumping bamboo, like Fargesia nitida, which will not run and which should stay evergreen in your area. The downside is that you will need to buy a fair number of plants because clumpers only get a little bit bigger in diameter each year, and won't be sending out satellite plants that will fill in gaps. 2) Plant running bamboo, like Phyllostachys aureosulcata (commonly known as Yellow Groove), and install bamboo barrier in a long oval pattern to contain the rhizomes. Bamboo barrier is a hard, thick, specialty plastic that comes in rolls and is installed in the ground about 24" deep to block rhizomes growing into unwanted areas. Below is a link that shows what this looks like, and provides some other good advice. Here is a link that might be useful: Bamboo control

Consider inward opening gate (from the back yard point of view.) What will happen to water in this area that does not come from the house downspout, but comes straight from falling rain? It's above ground and has to run somewhere. I would consider NOT running the downspout discharge underground but keeping it at the surface and letting it run with the overall flow of surface drainage. The typical configuration is downspout to tail piece, to splash block, to ground surface that is graded to drain away from structure. It's much less trouble than underground pipes which can clog ... in the middle of the storm, of course. For creating privacy, you will probably want to create a 10 or 15' run hedge of tall, tight shrubs along the property line. The walk can shift its layout once it has passed through the gate opening, in order to accommodate them.