Plants for Privacy

 

 "What can I plant to get some privacy?" That's a common question to the garden radio shows, especially from homeowners with small yards...and neighboring two-story homes.

 Here are some screening plants that can be a perfect fit for the Central Valley, lower foothills and the Bay Area of California. 

For quicker privacy,  don't install these plants on the outer edges of your property.

Plant them closer to the area you want to keep private.

For large yards, consider coast redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens). These evergreen trees can quickly overwhelm an area, getting over 50 feet tall and 15 feet wide at the base. Planted six or seven feet apart, coast redwoods will quickly

become a good screen. Be sure to plant coast redwoods at least 10 feet away from any fence or building.

Want a tree that looks like a willow without all the

problems? Try the Australian willow (Geijera parviflora). This evergreen tree with long, narrow, drooping leaves gets about 25 feet tall and 20 feet wide.

Incense Cedar (Calocedrus decurrens) 50-90' tall, 40-50' spread; evergreen; slow growth; takes heat, wind, drought.

 


Sweet Bay (Laurus nobilis) 30-40' tall, 20-40' spread.

Use its aromatic leaves for seasoning. Takes well to pruning.

Good container tree.

 
For a big yard, try the Calabrian pine (Pinus brutia or Pinus halpensis 'brutia' ) 30-80' tall, 15-25' spread.

For narrow areas:

Fern Pine (Podocarpus gracilior). 20-60 ft. tall, 10-20 ft. wide.

Thuja occidentalis "Emerald": 15 ft. tall, 3-4 ft. wide.

Juniperus scopulorum "Skyrocket": 15-20 ft. tall; 2-3 ft. wide. BUT...junipers need easy draining soil and can suffer from a wide variety of maladies, including spider mites, aphids, twig borers and blight.

SHRUBS FOR PRIVACY

For homes with planting areas about 15 feet wide, choose among these taller shrubs for privacy that  do well in our area. Plant them at least six feet away from any building or fence.

These are minimum hassle plants that will give your yard some privacy. All of these require full sun and regular water:

• Photinia (Photinia x fraseri). There's a reason you see these shrubs everywhere around here: photinia is a fast growing shrub whose established green leaves are complemented by the new, reddish-colored growth this time of year. Photinia makes an excellent privacy screen, getting eventually to 15 feet tall with an equal spread. For a smaller, slower growing variety, try the "Indian Princess". To get photinia to spread, pinch back new growth in the spring to encourage it to bush out.

• Bottlebrush (Callistemon citrinus). This plant, which produces red, brush-like flowers throughout the year, can take our heat and poor soils. Bottlebrush is fast growing and easy to train. Its flowers are attractive to bees and hummingbirds; so, people with aversions or allergies to bee stings should avoid this plant. On the other hand, if you're looking for a shrub that can get as tall as 15 feet that will keep the hummingbirds in your yard, the bottlebrush is for you.

• Evergreen Euonymus (Euonymus japonica). This plant gets 8-10 feet tall, and is considered a real garden "toughie". Euonymus can take lots of heat as well as poor soil. Many euonymus varieties have glossy, leathery, all-green leaves. But there are varieties that have more leaf color, such as the aureo-variegata, which has leaves with splashes of yellow surrounded by a green margin.

• New Zealand Flax (Phormium tenax). Any plant that can thrive in our south Sacramento County yard, an area that gets heavy wind, high heat and can still prosper in our rocky, clay hardpan gets my vote for plant of the year. Our New Zealand flax plants not only survive in those conditions, but came through like champs during the extensive backyard excavation, grading and remodeling work that took place near their roots three years ago. New Zealand flax can get to nine feet high with a six to eight foot spread. The long, sword-shaped vertical leaves have a brownish red color; other flaxes have colors that range from purplish-bronze to yellow. New Zealand flax works well as a screening plant, hiding unattractive (yet necessary) backyard equipment such as swimming pool pumps and filters.

• Clumping Bamboo. Good screening Bamboo varieties recommended by Madman Bamboo of Sacramento:
Bambusa multiplex "Golden Goddess"
B. multiplex "Alphonse Karr"
B. olhammii "Giant Clumping Timber Bamboo"


VINES FOR PRIVACY

For narrow areas, a vine may be what you need for privacy. Construct a sturdy trellis, perhaps on a short wall or fence. 

A good, evergreen vine for that trellis in full sun is Carolina jessamine (Gelsemium sempervirens). It produces yellow flowers in the spring. 

Other evergreen vines to consider include:

crossvine (Bignonia capreolata), 

evergreen clematis, 

violet trumpet vine (Clytostoma callistegioides), 

common winter creeper (Euonymus fortunei radicans),

lacevine (Fallopia baldschuanica), 

jasmine, 

trumpet honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens), 

mattress vine (Muehlenbeckia complexa),

passion vine (Passiflora jamesonii), 

potato vine (Solanum laxum), 

and star jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides).

Potato Vine

Ask the Snarky Farmer

Each Friday, we delve into the email bag of garden questions:

Doug from Lodi writes, "We have many photinia bushes that we use as a screening plant. This year, several are looking in bad shape. They all get equal water so I feel that's not the problem. Could it be grubs or cut worms in the ground? Are they possibly in need of fertilizer? Our soil in Lodi is fairly sandy, with no rocks or clay.

Doug, it's only fair to the rest of us that anyone with perfect soil must suffer through the occasional plant problem. For a positive identification of the cause of your photinia's illness, you may want to take a sample of an ailing photinia branch to a nursery that employs a CCN Pro or your county's Cooperative Extension office.
If there is spotting on the leaves, and the leaves are falling, it could be entomosporium leaf spot, a fungus that pops up during warm, wet spring weather. Entomosporium is a fungal disease that spots the leaves of plants in the Pomoideae group of the rose family, including apple, flowering crab apple, evergreen pear, hawthorn, pear, photinia, pyracantha, quince, Rhaphiolepis (pictured), and toyon. If that is the case, remove infected leaves from the ground and the shrub. Also, avoid overhead watering. Making sure there is room between the plants for good air circulation can help. If that is impractical, try removing some of the lower branches.
And, in a rare instance where mulch can be counterproductive, the experts at UC say to remove any mulch beneath the plant, which may harbor the fungus.

p.s. "CCN Pro" stands for "California Certified Nursery Professional"... not to be confused with John Fogerty, a CCR Pro.

Robert of North Sacramento wants to know: "I am getting ready to put in a garden and the soil gets pretty hard, possibly due to clay, and I was considering tilling in some ground bark to help loosen the soil. I have access to two types: cedar and fir. Which would be best? Is there something other than bark I should be looking at?"

You may want to check with Doug, maybe he has a spare hundred cubic yards of pristine topsoil that he might be willing to share. If that doesn't work out, try adding organic compost instead of bark into your clay soil to improve it. Bark takes quite awhile to break down when mixed into soil. Plus, it will tie up nitrogen that your existing plants need. Instead, add about one cubic yard of organic compost for every 300 square feet of garden area. Use the bark, either cedar or fir, as a four inch layer of mulch around your trees and shrubs or on top of your garden bed. This will help control weeds, conserve soil moisture and slowly feed the soil as the bark decomposes. The question you have to ask yourself: do I rototill the compost into the soil, or just let it rest on top of the existing soil? There are two very vehement schools of thought on this...a subject for a future blog!

And if your backyard looks like this, cracked clay in the summer, mud in the rainy winter...add four inches of mulch on all your walkways. It will improve the soil and keep you from sinking to your knees in the winter.

Maureen of Paradise wonders, "I'm baffled. What is 'hardening off'?"

"Hardening off" is one of those 50-cent horticultural terms that gardeners like to use to make them feel smarter than everyone else. Sort of like "acarpous" (sterile), "bipinnately compound" (a complicated leaf construction, e.g., the shape of a Chinese pistache leaf) or "File for Chapter 11" (what some nurseries do in a recession). "Hardening Off" simply means: let the plant get used to the outdoors slowly. It has nothing to do with Viagra. For example, if you have tomato seedlings indoors in early spring, you may want to place them outdoors in a shady spot for daytime hours for a week or so in mid-spring (bring them in at night). During the second week, let them spend the night outdoors, too, in a protected area (as long as no freezes are predicted). Then, during the third week, acclimate the plants to their permanent home. Plant them in their garden home, but place a row cover or hot cap or wall o' water around them for a couple of days. Then, let 'em grow!