Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Spitz Mcgee
You have all be so great to help me out! This hedge will be my only opportunity to block out the sights and more importantly sounds of the busy rural highway. It is full sun and the house is atleast 50 ft away
from the mound at its closest point. I am trying to minimize the negative effect on my future resale because I am the only house in the neighborhood with property line on this busy road.
|
Spitz, you are so very welcome! As to the space, I actually was referring to the width of the mound, but you can still plant on the slope of it. With that much space I would suggest that you try and do your tallest plantings in groups of 3 or 5 and place each group in a staggered pattern, with the taller plantings at the end points like this: W Do consider the ultimate mature width and height. I would place the smaller shrubs and flowers on the house side of the screen for esthetics from your property. That is where you will need to determine the shade as the taller evergreen trees grow. If the sun will pass from north to south or east to west, you will need to know how much sun those shrubs and flowers will get after the trees are planted. If the house side of the planting will be north, that will limit what shrubs you can plant.
There are some wonderful vibrunums with flowers in the spring and berries for the birds. Some grow quite wide but most are not evergreen, especially in your zone 5 location. Here's a site about them.
http://www.sylvannursery.com/pdf/viburnum.pdf
One of the loveliest viburnums is the Viburnum plicatum var. tomentosum and they're hardy in your zone. Also known as doublefile viburnum because it blooms in clusters along the horizontal stems with a row of blossoms on each side of the stem, creating a double row. Consider Viburnum plicatum 'Summer Snowflake' that gets up to 10' tall but only 6' wide, or it's larger cousin Viburnum plicatum 'Shasta'. There is even a variegated 'Shasta' now. Shasta can get quite wide, and in front of a group of three hollies, you would only need one to knock your socks off when it's mature in size and in bloom. The 'tomentosum' viburnums have layerd branches and sometimes people think they are some type of dogwood tree.
http://www.hort.uconn.edu/plants/v/vibpli/vibpli3.html
In five years a one gallon pot (if you can find one that small) will probably have doubled in size. Larger ones may take a little longer. Figure when planting the saying: "The first year they sleep, the second year they creep and the third year they leap." It will take them a year to establish their root systems and you will need to water, in the winter too if there's no snow cover and it's dry. Of course if you get lake effect snow, no problem. You'll just have to worry about drying winds!
Newt