What Are the Best Plants to Give Yard "Privacy"

They may not grow superfast, but rose of sharon can grow tall and be pretty when flowering. My grandmother has a row of them to block her view of a cinderblock wall. So can azaleas (those can grow pretty fast and are bushy).

Bamboo can be a nightmare. Friend of mine bought a house and has spent months trying to reclaim her side yard from the bamboo. I would avoid it.

It all depends on what you want.
Do you want trees or plants that keep their leaves year round or will trees that loose their leaves in the winter be ok?
I saw where you have a 2 & 4 year old. Do want trees that will grow fast so they can learn to climb trees or may even have a tree house?
Do you want trees or vines that give you somethig back like fruit and nuts?
Do you know what climate zone you live in? It seems Springboro is just south of Dayton.

Let us know.

You indicated that you live in a neighborhood with no trees. The trees I'm recommending here give you several advantages. They are beautiful landscape trees. They grow fast and they give either nuts or fruit.

Pecan trees. They produce nuts in 5-7 years and are great if you like pecan pies or have friends that do. By the time they produce fruit, your kids will love climbing them and they can play under them until then. They will eventually reach 75' tall and almost that wide. They really enhance a property. If you plant two different varieties they will produce more and bigger nuts. They are wonderful to set a picnic table and BBQ under. I recommend the Colby Pecan and the Southern Giant Pecan.

If you like walnuts, they grow 30 to 40 feet tall. They bear nuts in 4 to 7 years. They are also good landscape trees. They will also bare more and bigger nuts if you plant two separate kinds. I recommend Lake English Walnut, and Stark® Kwik-Krop® Walnut. The Stark tree bears in 2-5 years and is sold by Stark Brothers nursey. (They have been in business since 1816.)

For landscape trees, there is the Wilson Mimosa Tree. Mimosas, also called silk trees, add elegance to a landscape with fine, graceful green leaves and clusters of dainty pink flowers throughout the summer. An easy-care tree, it is both drought resistant and fast growing. Mimosa flowers attract hummingbirds and butterflies!

The maple tree is also a very nice landscape tree. They grow around 50 feet tall. Their chief claim to fame is the colors their leaves turn in the fall. They are absolutely beautiful. If you get a sugar maple you could even make your own syrup. Wouldn't that be a conversation starter?

If you like fruit you could grow lots of different trees and fruit.

Cherry trees. They grow 25 to 30 feet tall. If you get semi-dwarf trees they grow 15 to 18 feet tall and about 15 feet wide. I love cherries. If you get different varities you will get more and larger fruit. I would recommend you go to Home Depot or something similar and see what they have. Then I would go to a good nursery in your area and ask them to recommend cherry varities. The main idea is to plant what you like to eat.
North Star is a pie cherry that has been around for decades. It only grows 8-10 feet tall, but has beautiful cherry blossoms in the spring.

As far as evergreen trees go, I would recommend cedar trees. You can cut branches and bring in a very nice fragrance from the branches at Christmas time. They look very good on a mantle. We had many cedar trees on our 26 acre lot. The kids and I would make it a family outing to go and cut down the prettiest cedar tree we could find and put it up in our home for our Christmas tree.The kids would all disappear throughout the property and then come back to the house so we could all them go out and decide which one we wanted for our Christmas tree. After we brought it back home we would all come in for a cup of hot chocolate. Then we would bring in the tree and set it up. The kids and I still reminise about that. If you planted 7 or 8 at the very back of your poperty, you could go out with your kids and cut one down each year. Just plant a new one when you cut an old one.

When you plant a tree, dig a $10 hole for a $5 tree. You will be very happy you dug the hole more than was required. I usually take and dig a hole large enough that a 32 gallon trash can will fit in the hole and not be seen from ground level. I take a bag of steer manure and pore it into the bottom and ix it 50/50 with dirt from the hole. Then I add about 6" of dirt and then I plant the tree with about a 33/33/33 mix of dirt from the hole compost and plantng mix. Also, NOW is the time to get and plant bareroot trees. Bareroot trees are much less expensive than potted trees. I think they also grow faster and quicker/better.

I hope that helps. Good luck to you and yours.

My property is surrounded by Lilacs and Mock Orange. I love them.

Hi! I have to say a kind word about bamboo. There are two kinds- clumping and running- the stories you hear about are the running ones. We planted an evergreen clumping bamboo on our property line and they are beautiful and we couldn't be happier. Our neighbor's house is on the property line and our pool is the seven foot in it is supposed to be and the bamboo makes a lovely fence to protect our kids from hitting the neighbor's house when they throw things in the pool. We could never have a fence high enough given the proximity but we do have this lovely, high(16?ft)always green plant that sways gently in a breeze and the birds love to hang out in. Keeping it in control has not been an issue at all and it requires no care.

We put in a planting bed along the property line, about 10 feet long and 4 feet wide, just where the major line of sight was that made the proximity of the neighbors a little odd. At each end we planted 4 ft tall aborvitas (now about 9 feet tall). In the middle we have tall decorative grasses. They grow up in the spring, ending up about 5 feet tall by mid summer. In the fall they turn brown, but we leave them standing all winter for the privacy. As soon as the snow melts in the spring, we cut them down, and they grow up again. Along the front of the planting bed, in front of all the tall stuff, I put in some decorative perennials like day lilies for color, and of course mulch under everything. Works great.

Columnar buckthorn is a very effective privacy hedge. It is very easy to prune (I have zero gardening skills, but can keep ours tamed without killing the shrub). I think it is not allowed in some areas because it CAN be an invasive species, but ours was already here.

I trimmed ours back so much a few years ago that I was sure that I had injured or killed it, but now it is back to what it was before I trimmed it. I'm keeping it, now that I want to have a shady spot in our yard.

Arborvitae is an evergreen that makes a great barrier year round.
They come in various sizes - see what will fit in the area you are thinking of.
You can trim them.
I really would not do bamboo unless you have it in a container.
I've seen people plant it in buried cement containers and it STILL got out.
Invasive simply does not describe the extent this stuff can take over - and the shoots can sprout up 20 feet from where you planted it - you'll be fighting it for years.

We have an 8000 square foot lot and had the same issue 12 years ago. If you want privacy then you will need a couple evergreen trees but they don't have to be pine trees. We have an acacia tree in one corner that was slightly taller than the fenceline when we bought it. We have to have it trimmed every year and it's probably 2 stories tall (year round privacy). In the other corner we have African sumac trees, they don't like too much water and are just as tall and almost as full as the other. On the right side fence we have fern trees and provide year round privacy as well. 12 years later they are almost 2 stories tall. Good luck. =) The gaps we have have trees that lose their leaves in the winter so we feel exposed but not so bad with the other 5 trees. =)

for plants we have some dwarf oleanders and jasmine vines that are growing on the fence. They are nice to look at but provide no privacy benefits.

We planted arborvitae (evergreen tree) on both sides of our property to give us privacy. If you have deer living near you make sure they are deer resistance otherwise you will have to spray them at the end of every fall.

Also, we now have quite a bit of privacy on our patio from just the various bushes planted in the beds around the patio that have filled in over the years.

Fyi... We planted Christmas trees in the back which will get huge eventually because we back up to community space.

You can plant bushes such as lilac or a Scotch broom, looks a lot like a lilac but has yellow flowers and a sweet but not as strong scent. But they will take a few years to grow tall enough to block others from seeing in your yard. Same with an evergreen tree such as a Christmas tree. But if you plant one of these in a corner it will block much of your yard it may take several years though for it to grow big enough.
You could also put up a lattice fence with an ivy growing on it. But ivy can and will take over the yard if not kept cut back.

You need to be careful because as most grow up they grow out.

I would go with Bamboo but make sure you have at least a 1x12 underground to keep them from taking over your whole yard.

I have white pines but then I have almost a half an acre so I don't mind that they take up the last 20 feet of my property.

Growing up, we had honeysuckle. It grew in thick but stuck to the fence. You couldn't see any neighbors.

Hi,
I personally like well positioned raised berms with tall grasses in them and perennials and a mulch base. The grasses cut the view and add spacial boundaries to our lot. Just past the berms, we have a portion of low lying split rail fence, that doesn't surround the yard, therefore it's purpose is purely aesthetic.

Have fun reconfiguring your yard!

hi!

Here is a great website from Ohio's DNR (dept of natural resources). It list's trees/shrubs found in Ohio and will let you know of potential issues, growth of the plant, height, where in Ohio to plant, shape, type of soil, etc.
http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/tabid/5361/Default.aspx

FYI - While I LOVE how honeysuckle smells this site stated "Amur honeysuckle is highly invasive and should not be planted in Ohio."