If your home or yard is overlooked by neighbors or nearby buildings, one of the best ways to increase your privacy is to grow trees that grow quickly and provide good, year-round screening. Here’s a useful guide to the best trees for privacy.
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The Best, Fast-Growing Privacy Trees
Trees are the ideal solution to your problem, whether it’s a new extension that overlooks your home, or a less-than attractive house that’s bordering yours.
Not only do fast-growing trees provide dense screening, they also help block wind and noise, while also benefitting your natural environment and creating ever-changing beauty in your space through the seasons.
What are the Fastest Growing Trees for Privacy?
If you want fast-growing privacy trees or privacy shrubs, consider the Japanese maple, silver maple, or hybrid poplar, all of which grow 2 feet or more per season.
Good fast-growing privacy shrubs to consider include cherry laurel, bay laurel, privet and bamboo.
1. The Japanese Maple
Acer Plamatum is commonly known as the Japanese maple, and is a hardy and adaptable ornamental tree well-known for its striking and delicate colorful Fall foliage. Sango-kaku is one of the most widely available varieties and is one of the best screening trees for both large and small gardens.
These trees are well-known for their exceptional beauty, with delicate pale green leaves that transform to red and gold in the Fall. They do lose their leaves each year, but the elegant coral-red bark keeps your space visually interesting through the winter.
This is a truly special and beautiful tree, and I’ve included a video to show you what a striking impact it can have in your yard.
2. Grayswood Ghost
The Grayswood Ghost tree, Betula utilis jacquemontii 'Grayswood Ghost', is from the birch family, all of which are popularly used as fast-growing privacy trees.
I’ve chosen this variety for its striking looks, as it offers the whitest bark of all birch trees, contrasting beautifully with the green foliage in summer and golden leaves in Fall and creating an eye-catching screen for your garden.
As one of the best fast-growing privacy trees, these birches work very well as screening trees, in borders and in small gardens as well as larger yards. They can be planted singularly or in a row to create a thick screen.
3. Crab Apple Tree
Another really beautiful tree that’s one of the most popular trees for privacy from neighbors is the Crab Apple. Filled with clusters of fragrant bright pink, red or white flowers in the spring and colorful fruit in the Fall, this tree is a real showpiece that will transform your garden while adding privacy.
I’ve chosen the Malus laura Crab Apple as my recommended privacy tree because of its upright growth, ability to fit easily in smaller spaces, and the striking foliage, flower and fruit colors.
Although it grows more slowly than other privacy trees, it is an exceptionally worthwhile and attractive screening tree that is easy to grow and needs minimal maintenance.
4. Arborvitae
Popularly known as the ‘Green Giant’, this tree acts as a beautiful alternative for fences and walls. The arborvitae provides privacy as it can screen your garden or yard from unwanted visitors.
Though it grows very tall, it has a conical shape that economizes space. The tree is hardy and tolerates almost any soil and environment.
5. Dogwood
The Conus Florida species of the dogwood tree is one of the most common types of dogwood and they grow from shrub sizes to tree sizes. There are various species of the dogwood with some species like the Korean dogwood producing fruits that are edible.
Dogwood trees have bright and vibrant colors that can brighten the garden and make it look beautiful.
6. Pleached Trees
Pleached trees aren’t a type of tree – instead, it’s a way of growing and shaping different tree types to maximize the screening and privacy they provide.
Pleaching is a French technique of training branches through one another or through a structure to create screens and even tunnels.
These techniques can be used on deciduous trees as well as evergreens if you want year-round screening, allowing for sunlight to access the lower levels of the trees while creating a thick, green and hedge-like spread at your privacy height.
Planting a series of pleached trees in a row creates a tall, narrow screen and is an effective space saver which will effectively block out a line of windows or a neighbor’s extension.
You can also use this technique to block single windows, planting just one or two well positioned pleached trees to gain a magical, instant transformation to your garden space.
The Best Trees for Pleaching
The best varieties of trees for pleaching include the American Hornbeam, beech trees, maple trees, carob trees, Lindens, apple and pear trees, crab apple trees and hawthorn trees.
How to Pleach Trees
This is a very labor-intensive process that requires a lot of hard work and dedication, but creates breathtaking results, adding height on your boundary without crowding the lower levels.
You can plant the trees as you usually would, spacing them properly according to their specific height and spread patterns. The real work is in the pruning and threading of the young tree’s branches to create the hedge effect.
You will need to:
- Create a frame for the branches to be threaded onto
- Shape the branches through the frame in the dormant winter months
- Prune errant growth through the spring and summer
- Prune away low-level growth
Here’s a great instructional video on how to pleach trees.
Create Your Ideal Space with Fast Growing Privacy Trees
I hope you’ve enjoyed this list of screening trees that add beauty and privacy to your yard. These trees made the list because they are low maintenance. They have unique and attractive characteristics, work well in both large and small gardens (especially on borders), and are tolerant of a wide range of climates and soil types.
Wherever you are in the USA, you’re almost sure to find the right trees for privacy on this list!