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Landscape Screening with Richard Clark
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Whether your home borders a busy street, a construction zone or simply some overly-friendly neighbors, creating privacy in your yard presents a special landscape challenge. The owners of a beautiful home surrounded by new construction asked us to help them create a private garden space. We invited Richard Clark, of Clark Farms in Wakefield, to tackle the challenge with us.
Richard and the homeowners agreed to create the privacy screening with a naturalistic woodland border. The new border will include a planting bed with a curving, informal contour, as opposed to the straight and narrow arborvitae border that already exists along one side of the property. The arborvitae border works well when space is at a premium but it lacks visual excitement. The informal border will be more diverse and visually interesting. However, it will require more space because it will include several layers of plants: tall evergreens in the back, medium-size rhododendrons in the middle and low-growing evergreens in front. The overall result will not only look more natural, but also will provide a better visual and auditory screen. The varieties planted by Richard and the homeowner include:
Tall evergreens for back of border:
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Concolor fir (Abies concolor) This beautiful insect and disease-resistant evergreen will grow 30-50 feet high but is slow-growing. It tolerates heat, drought and cold but doesn’t like wet soils. It has flattened needles, slivery blue-green above and below. Cones are gray to purple, 3 to 51/2 inches long and upright. The young tree is conical. Older trees develop a dome-like crown. |
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White pine (Pinus strobus) A beautiful native evergreen with long, soft needles, white pine is rapid- growing when young and will thrive in full sun or light shade. It grows to 50 – 80 feet with a very straight trunk and wispy, horizontal branches. Cones are 4-7 inches long and have lots of resin. |
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Colorado blue spruce (Abies pungens) Beautiful silver blue to green foliage is the hallmark of this evergreen. This hardy tree requires little pruning to maintain the pyramidal shape and is tolerant of most soil types, although extremely wet sites should be avoided. With a growth rate of 1/2-1ft. per year, this evergreen will reach approximately 30 ft. in height at maturity. |
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| We chose a medium-sized rhododendrons for the middle row. Rhododendron ‘Scintillation’ features pastel-pink flowers and dark, glossy foliage. Scintillation forms a well-shaped plant with good insect resistance. It will grow to 41/2 – 6 feet over a 10 year period.
For the foreground plantings we used Coastal leucothoe (Leucothoe axillaries). Leucothose has graceful, long arching branches and grows 3-4 feet tall, 4-6 feet wide, preferring part shade to deep shade. The shrub has beautiful red foliage in the fall and is deer resistant. It works well planted in masses or as undergrowth for broadleaf or needle evergreens.
For more information, call the URI Master Gardening Hotline at 1-800-448-1011 (401-874-2900 if out of Rhode Island). Click here for more information on Clark Farms. |
