GM - sounds like a good start! I think maybe Photinia's might be out of the range of up-keep, but what about filling in with mid-growth crepe myrtles, then some low growing boxwood and then for a finish....some burgundy barberries? That would provide color, low upkeep and still give the variety of color & leaf size. Just a thought.

Greenman
That's EXACTLY the type of privacy fence that I am slowly working on. I say slowly because I have a large area to cover, and also have patches of shade, plus dry areas that don't get much water, and that I don't WANT to have to water on a regular basis.

Several years ago, I bought a bunch of Thuga evergreens. That was the year we had a hot summer and serious drought. They all died, except one, even though I spent a lot of time and a small fortune watering, so I went back to the drawing board.

I'm trying to plant things like shrubby Crepe Myrtle at least 6 ft tall in the areas that get more water, (like close to my well), as well as the one surviving Thuga, a variegated previt.(sp), here and there, tall shrub roses, and this fall I'm looking for native Elderberry, which actually are quite pretty in bloom. I've also planted some tall decorative grasses which give a lot of cover and look good during all the seasons, and even in winter, with the tall plumes swaying in the breezes. They are very hardy as well and I think look nice in a mixed border. I've also considered some type of small, "weeping" fruit trees to be included in the mix which would not only bloom, but be edible. Or if you didn't want to harvest the fruit, I'm sure the birds would be happy to take care of that obligation while adding the beauty of wildlife to your garden.

But, frankly I'm sort of at a loss because of having to give attention to other obligations, and will have to give some serious thought, (like you) before I make very many permanent plantings.

I think we're both on the right track however, desiring to create a lovely mixed border rather than the usual green monolith as you mentioned. I like the evergreen aspect of Boxwood but my experience with it is that it's too slow to put on growth for my privacy fence needs.

Good luck with your great idea, and if you come up with any ideas, please post back. And-I'm glad you brought up the subject because it's been on my mind for fall planting. Hopefully some of the other gardeners here will come up with some suggestions for Oklahoma hardy attractive shrubs suitable for privacy fencing.

Barbara

Great idea! I've been thinking burgundy barberries too! I think I can take some slips from my Photina in my front bed without having to buy more. One of my large Crepe Myrtles "reproduced" itself this summer, but I don't want to get too many of the same thing.

Barbara

For flowering shrubs have you considered lilacs? Once established they are pretty much care-free. Mixed with some crepe myrtles you'd have flowers spring and summer.

Debra

Debra
That's another great idea, and there are so many new varieties now. Lilacs bring back some fond memories of my childhood because most all of the homes back then had lilac bushes. Who could forget that heavenly fragrance? They grow well in Oklahoma, I don't know why more folks aren't planting them these days.
This idea fits the bill, and will be on my "to do" list. Thanks for the mention!

Barbara

Barbara, I, too, have fond memories of lilacs from my childhood. There was a large lilac in the back yard of the rent house we lived in from when I was ten until I was fifteen. Then there was a gorgeous old one at the house we lived in when I was in SW Kansas in my early 20s. I love the frangrance! I always promised myself I would have a lilac if I ever got a house of my own.

I bought one last year to go in the front of my house, but it has really not done well. It hasn't grown hardly at all. Last summer it went dormant in late July. This spring I thought it was dead and was on the verge of shovel-pruning it when it finally began to leaf out, but this was after every other lilac in the neighborhood had already leafed out, bloomed, and the blooms had faded. It never did bloom. The leaves are turning brown again now which is a little later than last year. I'm really beginning to think it's just dying a slow death for some reason I can't fathom.

Luckily, I have another! For whatever reason, the elderly lady from whom I bought this house two years ago had someone try to chop down a couple of plants at the back corner of the house. All branches were cut back to just one large stem. One of these is some sort of tree that has to go as they are both way too close to the house foundation. The chop job didn't work. They both leafed out and grew new branches last year. I thought one looked like lilac leaves, although my neighbor didn't think so. She has a lilac on the south side of her house, but I think it must be a different variety. Like my dying one it has smaller leaves. Still, I couldn't think of anything else that has heart-shaped leaves like this, and I remember the ones from my younger days as having large leaves. So while I kept chopping off the other plant hoping to kill it (hasn't worked though), I left the second one alone. This spring it proved itself a lilac with one bloom! Just one, but that was enough to confirm that it's a lilac. Now, if I can just figure out how to successfully transplant it away from the house, maybe replace the sickly one with it, I will be a very happy camper!

I think both property owners and landscapers get into a habit of looking at what's new and trendy and forget about some of the old, tried and true favorites. Nurseries I think, too, push new stuff and stop carrying the things our grandparents loved and planted. I know you can always find new types of roses at nurseries, but it gets difficult to find some of the older types. It's really too bad. There's a reason our grandparents and their parents planted these things. In the days without our modern, convenient appliances their ordinary, everyday chores took a lot more time and work. They weren't interested in having to spend a lot of time and effort to keep their ornamental plantings healthy and attractive. Gardening time needed to be spent on edibles so they chose plants that they knew would survive and be alright pretty much on their own.

Neither of the times I lived in a house with a lilac in the yard did we ever do anything to them except enjoy them. No pruning, no feeding, no watering, nothing. Yet they were beautiful, year after year.

Debra

All good suggestions. Thanks, folks. Shekanahh, sounds like we're trying to accpmplish similar things with our privay hedges, though I suspect I have a smaller area to work with. I like all these ideas, and I'm not averse to slower growing shrubs, because there is an actual privacy fence separating our property. I'd just rather look at a cool hedge than a boring old fence when I walk into out backyard.
I love lilacs too, but am afraid that this area will be too hot and sunny. We had them where I grew up in north central KS and every time I smell them it reminds me of home - honeysuckle, too since we had a honeysuckle tree.

Didn't have time to read all this so if someone else recommended my suggestions sorry,

I have a privacy hedge of deciduos suckering plants mixed in with holly and euonymus. The really big euonymus that gets ten feet tall.

The deciduos shrubs are forsythia, kerria, spirea--the old fashioned one, and mockorange. The kerria and spirea sucker and the forsythia tiplayers if not pruned. A double row of these shrubs makes a thick hedge. I never prune, never water after the first summer or two and never rake leaves, just leave them under the shrubs to mulch. I think even the lilac would do well and it also suckers like crazy. I have it somewhere else. Snowball bush also can be tiplayered to increase thickness. The lilac and mockorange smell wonderful, and the kerria reblooms in fall in wet years.

Greenman, I'm not sure lilacs would mind a hot, sunny location at all. Mine is on the west side of the house where most of it gets full sun from late morning and through the hottest part of the afternoon. The south side of the plant gets some shade due to the tall evergreens that line the perimeter of my backyard. The south, shaded part of the plant is now showing signs of powdery mildew, but the sunny, north side is not. The reason lilacs don't do well in some of the warmer southern states is not the heat or sunshine but rather their lack of winter. Lilacs require freezing temperatures during winter in order to bloom.

Debra

Nandina (Heavenly Bamboo) might be another choice if you want a bush that will get about 6' tall. They have small leaves, grow thickly, and put on red berries in the fall that the birds love. They may grow taller than 6', I don't know. I trim mine across the top every fall to about 4' and then they put on 2' of growth in the following summer. They're in front of western exposure windows, so their growth helps shade the windows in summer and trimming in the fall allows the sun to come into the windows during cooler weather.

You might look into freetreesandplants.com, they always have a few interesting bushes. Costs $7.50 for two bare-root plants, that's postage and handling. It's a non-profit agency in Nebraska that provides jobs for the mentally disabled.

And if you want some of the shrubs I mentioned--kerria, lilac, spirea, forsythia--I can share after they go dormant in Nov for postage and handling. email me if interested.

I was told by our local gardening center that lilacs don't grow well in Oklahoma -- the lady said she had one that was 7 years old and still only 2 foot tall -- their growth is stunt. She recommended that we plant Elaeagnus (I can't remember which variety, but she said it would grow super fast).

I had a glossy abelia, and really liked it. But then I moved....

Now I have an abelia monasys, it smells divine, but is not evergreen.

This is what it looked like, shortly after I planted it. It is bigger now, but not in bloom. Blooms in early spring.

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Moni

I'm sorry, Melissa, but your gardening center lady doesn't know what she's talking about. There are a host of reasons why one lilac might not do well, including the variety, too little sun, poor drainage, too much acidity in the soil, but generally speaking lilacs do very well in Oklahoma. Here are a couple of pictures I just took of the one in my backyard. The first is of the base of the plant so you can see what was here when I bought this house two years ago. Every stem you see growing has grown off the stump in the past two years.

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I measured the cut part you can see facing the camera, which was originally a branch off a branch off the main stem (which is the knarled part you see behind it), and it measures an inch and a half up and down and an inch across. This shrub must have been enormous before it was chopped.

This next picture is taken from far enough back to see the whole plant. The top corner of the brick ledge under the window (far left) comes to my chin. Every stem with leaves on it has grown from the stump in just the past two years. Of course, it's gotten taller faster than a newly planted one would since it's growing from a well-established root system.

{{gwi:1123347}}

This certainly does not look like a plant whose growth has been stunted for living in Oklahoma. ;)

Debra

Oh, yeah! Lilacs have grown successfully in Oklahoma for as long as I can remember, and surely far beyond that. Maybe some of the newer varieties would do better in other parts of the country, is all I can think of. OR.... the garden center may not have had any lilacs when you were there and were trying to make a sale by steering you over to something else.

Love your pics, Moni and Debra.

Y'all,

I have to kind of side with Melissia's nurserywoman on this one. Lilacs do not grow as well in extreme south-central OK where Melissia and I live as they do in the parts of the state where y'all live. I blame it on the red, highly alkaline, slowly-draining clay soil and high pH water found here. Many of you who grow really nice lilacs don't have our cement-hard red clay that can hold water for weeks.

I have seen some very old lilacs in one older, well-established neighborhood in Ardmore, but not anywhere else. Someone in Marietta may have them in one yard, but I can't remember if what I saw in that yard was a lilac or something else. The soils are highly variable here, so if you happen to have some of the sandy soil, like some areas have, you probably could grow them here, but it is impossible in our clay. If you amend the clay highly they'll do OK for a while, but then they'll drown when we have one of our infamous rainy months....where a foot of rain or more falls in a month. Roots in clay soil, even in improved clay, cannot handle staying that wet that long.

I've tried all kinds of plants that need good drainage in highly-improved clay and most of them are short-lived at best, lasting maybe 2 or 3 years. In a wet year, our soils just stay too wet too long. I have found that the gardening conditions for many areas south of the Arbuckle Mountains are completely different from those north of the Arbuckles. For people like Melissia and I here in southern OK, our soil/growing conditions more closely resemble those found in Dallas-Fort Worth (where, coincidentally, lilacs do not do so well) than those found in OKC or Tulsa or Stillwater or Ponca City.

I'm not trying to pick a fight with y'all....but lilacs do not grow well here in my part of south-central OK and Melissia lives very close to me and I believe she has the same kind of clay I have, so I am sure they probably wouldn't do well there.

The plants that do best for me, even in improved clay, are those like hollies and southern wax myrtles that are native to areas that have slow-draining soils that fluctuate between being wet for weeks on end to being dry for long periods as well.

Dawn

Dawn, lilacs may not grow well in your area, but Melissa's garden center lady did not say they don't do well in southern Oklahoma or even "her area" of Oklahoma. She said, "in Oklahoma" implying all of Oklahoma and has Melissa believing that means the whole state. I realize Melissa was just conveying what she believed was expert advice. The lady should have qualified what she told Melissa rather than have her take it as a blanket statement covering the whole state. One of my pet peeves is so-called experts speaking with the voice of authority while giving out false information.

Debra

You know, I don't get the lilac thing. In Kildare Oklahoma (north of Ponca City) used to be this HUGE lilac. Then one summer it died.

I tried for years to grow lilacs when I lived in Ponca City, no luck.

Since then I lived in OKC, Tahlequah, Tulsa and now in Edmond. Must confess, I never tried another lilac. Spent to much money on them way back when.

Moni

I should have been specific, I apologize, I am in South central Oklahoma - and so is the nursery that I went to, so when I went there looking to get one, I moved from the Texas Panhandle and had lilacs there and loved them, she told me they wouldn't grow -- she meant for ME -- here in south central OK -- I forget that we have EXTREME differences in climate from North to South -- sorry -- I don't know how well they do or do not grow in any other area of OK -- I do know they grow great in the Texas panhandle ; ) If they grow in your area -- I'd say get a lot of them -- they smell fantastic --

When my now husband and I were dating, he didn't send me flowers, he'd pick lilacs and bring them to me -- needless to say, they are one of my favorite flowers and I really wanted to be able to grow them here in OK.

Dawn, you and I are buds. You could never pick a fight with me. :~)

I have a couple of lilac bushes, and I admit they have kind of struggled to put on flowers since being planted but that's because they bloom early and then get zapped by that dang late frost! GRR This year, they bloomed a second time, but only lightly.

That said, there's a huge lilac bush near where I used to work, that is loaded with flowers every spring. I need to go knock on the door of that house and ask if I can have a start. There are lots and lots of different varieties of lilac, but these that I bought were the only ones Lowe's had. Not that Lowe's is perfect at selling stuff that will thrive here. ;~)

Of course, I'm in the northeastern part of the state, almost in Kansas, and while it does get plenty hot and dry, not as much so as in more southern parts of the state. I have black gumbo soil.