Are you planning on prunning this to keep it square? Note that while beautiful they can easily be 8 feet across at the top and 10 feet high.

I have been brought to tear more than once by my extensive hedge.

We have a Laurel hedge outside our fence, we planted rooted Laurel cuttings in 1965 to screen the back of our lot from the 2 lane ( now 4 lane ) highway, these laurels have almost grown into trees. If you have the room, they will eventually make a visual barrier between you and the subdivision no doubt about it. Last year I had a tree service come and take 3' off the top to let more afternoon sun into my garden. I think at the time we planted the cuttings around 2' apart. Before we had it topped it was at least 15' high.

A......

This is a reseeding pest species here and should not be planted whether you want a large, coarse hedge - for some reason - or not.

They don't need any special care, so long as you're willing to let them get 30ft tall and wide, otherwise they can be a real bear to prune. They do reseed most definitely but are not nearly as bad as something like scotch broom.

You have to decide how big you want to let them get, and let that determine how far to put them from the fence and how far apart to plant them. I'd give them at least 8ft from the fence.

You could try bamboo. There are ones that don't spread, they form clumps. The hardy ones that can grow in your area are in the genus Chusquea, Fargesia, and Thamnocalamus. If you have room there are runners that grow any where from a few feet to over seventy feet that are in the Phyllostachys, Pleioblastus, and Pseudosasa genus. They require lots of fertilizer, summer water (like soil wet, but well draining), and they take about seven years before they really start growing enough to block views. They are also expensive. The nurseries that I know of that sell one gallon plants sell them for around twenty to thirty dollars each.

English laurel is a lot cheaper than bamboo and is attractive. If you don't want the size of English laurel, up to fifty feet, there is the other evergreen cherry that does well in Western Washington, the Portugal laurel, Prunus lusitanica. You can get seedlings as cheap as you can get English laurel seedlings. They do re-seed like English laurel, that is because birds like their fruit and spread the seeds. Both trees make good wildlife trees, both for cover and food. Neither plant re-seeds as much as their cousin the sweet cherry, which the native plant Nazis fail to tell us. And neither hybridizes with our native cherry as does the sweet cherry.