The BEST backyard trees for privacy

Looking for a landscaping solution to an ugly view?  These foolproof trees have delivered!

This is a post I've been meaning to write for years but somehow never got around to it.  Do not adjust your dials - I'm still the black thumbed blogger you have known all along but I wanted to share this little planting secret that I'm still impressed by all these years later.

My backyard is tiny and the back of our house faces a rather unattractive view.  This is a pretty common problem here so I figured there wasn't much we could do except plant a few trees and hope they grow high enough to make the view more tolerable.  Unlike other decorative topics, it's hard to find much on the internet about how high plants will grow in confined spaces so we were at a loss. So we turned to our friend (who was also a wonderful landscaper) for some help.  Aside from privacy, we needed plants that would have a small footprint and be hard to kill as I had a knack for murdering anything with roots.

Here is what it looks like now:

Here is what it looked like the day they were planted:


He selected Leland Cypress trees, serpentine Cypress trees, 1 red maple and a few other ornamental plants (that have since been crowded out).  If you would have told me that those plants would not only grow to hide the ugly view quickly but also thrive with absolutely NO involvement on my part, I wouldn't have believed you but they did!  Not only that but they don't shed their foliage during the winter so they create a privacy hedge all year round.



It has been almost ten years now (although it took much less time than that for them to grow to full height - they were hiding the view in just a couple of years from planting) and they are still going strong. In that time I've killed countless other plants in this backyard - my record is mostly unblemished! So I can only say these are somewhat magical trees that have survived a plant serial killer.

All this to say, if you are an urban gardener who is short on space and don't have a clue what to plant, you are very welcome!