I'm not familiar with cranberry but love my dogwoods. They grow slow so I would get as big as I could afford. In heavy shade they also don't get as full as they do in the sun. Their natural habitat is clay soil so no problem there. They are very pretty interlaced with redbuds which bloom at the same time.

Thanks I appreciate the response.

If you are wanting year roundprivacy it would be better to go with an evergreen. The more shade dogwoods get the more sparse they are.

If you don't mind it spreading like crazy, you could get some bamboo. The phyllostachys spread more than the clumping kind. Check out the bamboo forum if you are interested. but, it can be invasive unless you put in a barrier. They're also evergreen too and grow way faster than any pine trees do.

Yews grow in shade, are evergreen, and pretty hardy. I don't know if they like clay though.

Mountain laurel

Ziggy