A friend of mine planted about 100 Green Giants about three years ago. They were about 18-24" tall when he planted them. Green Giants are pretty deer resistant, but where my friend and I live there are just too many deer in a small area (island) for that to mean much. The first year he planted these 100 Green Giants, the deer destroyed about 25 of them. After he replaced them, I recommended that he start using Milorganite fertilizer around the trees to keep the deer away. (It's an unadvertized fact that Milorganite acts as a deer repellent.) He started dumping Milorganite around the base of the trees on the perimeter of his property and the following year those were nearly 2ft. taller than the other trees (same growing conditions). Needless to say he started using it around all the Green Giants and this year some of the ones that he started using it on first are taller than me (6ft.). I started using Milorganite on my lawn a few years ago to keep the deer away that were eating my plants and it did wonders for my lawn. I started dumping it around all my perennials, mixing it in with the potting soil for my annuals, and tilling it into my vegetable garden. Everything improved! The stuff is like the Frank's Red Hot commercial... I put that s*#& on everything! I'm not sure it's the "best" fertilizer for your Green Giants, but it's definitely good. In the past I was always afraid to fertilize because I'd overdone it too many times and killed/burned too many plants and lawn. Milorganite is organic, so you can't really use too muich... it will just sit there on/in the soil until the soil microorganisms can consume it. Good luck!

IMHO .... topping is an endless, life changing job ... remove the terminal shoot ... and ALL PLANTS will regenerate new ones ... period ... ergo .. every few years.. you will be up there removing more .. and ... every one you remove.. will be replaced by 3 to 5 ... unless you go up the year after each pruning .. and remove them ... that said... how are you going to do this at 15 feet??? ... rent scaffolding???? .. even with an standard 8 foot ladder.. you will have to be 7 feet tall ... and wielding some type of very sharp tool to make the cuts ... so .. in my estimation ... maintaining them at 15 feet is going to be problematic .... now.. on the other hand .... waiting 25 years for emeralds to get to 15 feet is going to be the opposite problem ... you actually need at least 3 plans for what you want to accomplish .... first... what is the fastest to grow.. [ergo fastest to die] plant that will help you out in the first 5 years or so .... maybe. god forbid i say this ... poplars ... plant those on the property line .... they will be sacrificed in 5 to 10 years ... that last year that they are within your capability to take down yourself .... yes.. they are deciduous ... but they will provide a screen of sorts.. even bare ... second.. the 5 to 10 year plan ... plant the GGiants in 3 to 5 feet ... and by the time the poplars go down ... they will be of size to take over .... then .. in front of the plain green plants.. there are a whole slew of slower growing ... arbs and chams that vary color .. blues.. yellows.. variegated.... as well as growth rates and textures .... lol.. you dont mention the size of your lot .... so this might not work in suburbia .... also .... the closer to the windows you work .... the smaller the plant is ... i presume they need to be 15 feet... because the grade falls off toward the road .... if planted closer to the window.. perhaps you can get a much smaller plant for the same purpose .... how close to plant ... how much money do you have .... how big are they to start with .. below is a picture of my GG planted as 6 inch rootings in 2 inch peat pots in 4/2000 .... i think they are spaced 8 foot on center .... too cold to run out and verify that today ... they will never grow to growth rate claims .... i think i am getting about 3ft per year.. but it took 3 years for them to grow the roots to generate that rate ... BTW ... they root easily ... any chance you have some rooting hormone... milk jugs.. gal plastic bags.. and a very bright area ... along with some potting soil .. or even better perlite??? i know you have the other plants .... for a $15 investment... the cost of one plant.. you might be able to have a hundred more plants by next fall ... good luck ken PS: anyone have a better suggestion than a stinkin poplar???? maybe some white pines .... 3 to 5 feet per year

All matrices of growing plants do produce organic matter, long after initial planting. Although we may tend to think of plant roots as static, permanent structures, the fine "feeder" roots, which do the actual absorption of water, with nutrients dissolved in that water, are replaced numerous times during the course of a single growing season. All this sloughed-off root system is organic matter, and this is the reason, for example, that old, well-established park lawns can often look pretty good even though there are almost no inputs in terms of fertilizers. If there are trees in the area, those too are growing/dying/sloughing off the active portions of their root systems over the course of a single year. So I can't agree that once applied, the gradual loss of organic matter via decomposition is a one-way street headed to OM depletion. That's not what I see, and if one were to, say, mulch over the top, with wood chips, bark, cocoa hulls, pine straw, name your organic material....this too is easily enough to maintain the OM content through time. None of which should be taken to indicate that amending holes at time of planting, for such relatively permanent plants as trees and shrubs, is a good idea. It's not, and the drainage anomalies are the reason. If the plant came in a ball of highly organic potting medium, water will not move into that course material until all the surrounding finer-textured soil is saturated. If for whatever reason, the transplant came with very fine soil and is then planted into a courser soil, it will be prone to being inundated with water. Water cannot move from fine textured soils to coarse-textured ones until the fine stuff is completely saturated. You don't want such issues to be plaguing your plantings. I also install large areas of bedding plants, ie. flower beds, and there, the incorporation of well-cured compost is simply an amazing improvement, with one caveat: Some species you may wish to grow actually will perform better in a dry, lifeless, almost sterile soil. Adding compost to beds where you wish to grow such plants will often yield big, floppy plants which can't hold themselves up, and which often do not produce flowers. But for all other cases, it works wonders. +oM

Thanks for the input. Here are some more pics. The first to show the chain-link fence and what I'm trying to screen from. The second to show the other side of the property where I have a Woodfence that I want to add privacy trees in front of. You can also see that it's downward sloped and it gets a little wet. I checked out the juniper they do seem to be a little pricey. Since my place is fenced in would you suggest emerald green instead?