Nanking cherry ,sand cherry and sour cherry are good for hedges and grow fast. Nankingand fruit taste the best imo if it's ripe.some Nankings may not be good because they are grown from seed and taste may differ a Bit from shrub to shrub.

Thank you! I will look into those options.

I've never grown elderberry, but have had many nanking cherry bushes. Super hardy, grows fast, and great fruit if you can beat the birds to it. The cherries are not as much fleshy as they are juicy, about 1/2" in diameter. Here's ours a few weeks ago in full bloom, we like to keep it pruned to keep it bushy:

Russian Almond may be a good mix with the Nanking Cherries which need to cross pollinate with another cherry to produce the fuzzy covered almond. Throw in some Elderberry in spots to mix it up.

Thanks for the ideas! I have read that Nanking cherries are mostly pit. Do you feel like they are still useful for things like pie and jelly? Beautiful photo. I am intrigued.

If you want pies buy sour cherries. If you can find they sell most of our sour cherry variety as shrub form. Evans is the best.

I've read that those Russian almonds have a seed inside that is like the seeds inside apricots they contain high vitamin b17 which has been know to cure cancer. They sell bags of the pits for very expensive like 2lbs for $20 or more. I think in usa they made it illegal to sell raw seeds like that because a doctor was curing people with cancer. Later they removed his license and he claims it's because he cured cancer.

I will look into the Evans cherry, thanks. The Russian almond is a beautiful shrub! Not quite big enough for my the screen though. I measured again and we really need shrubs that will grow 8 to 10 feet tall. 6' is just not tall enough to give us the privacy we are looking for.

Anyone know anything about high bush cranberries?

Interesting about the cancer cure!

Manchurian apricots grow like shrubs if you let them.

High bush cranberries are understory plants here and in the forests of northern Saskatchewan, I have a couple in my yard, they are not very dense, more tall and lanky. I like to eat the berries after they are frozen. You would have to plant a couple of close rows. Aphids could be a pain in butt, that goes for the sour cherries also. The cranberries grow where the soil is moist under poplar and trembling aspen. There are dense forms but the one that I have is under your desired height, there may be other Viburnum's but may not be edible, but birds are supposed to like them. What about Saskatoon's instead of serviceberries, my understanding is Saskatoon's are more hardy, with some varieties having larger better tasting berries. I have not tasted a serviceberry. The University of Saskatchewan has a good web site.

Wayne, yes, I have considered a Saskatoon serviceberry. (I was told Saskatoon is just another name for a particular type of serviceberry sold here). I have been hearing mixed things about how tall and fast they grow. It is still on my list though. Thank you for the info on the cranberry.

Xty G, i would say there is enough fruit around the pit to make them worth eating. For jelly, ithink they would be great, but I personally would not use them for pie because of the high water content and smaller size of the berries (removing pits while keeping the fruit whole would be a challege).

Saskatoons make phenomenal pie. Where I grew up, we planted a row of saskatoon berry bushes, we definitely had bushes that were over 8 feet tall, but that took over 10 years to grow to that point. When the fruit is ready, it is ready within a short time frame, a couple weeks at most if i remember correctly, and again the hardest part was beating the birds to it.

Some good suggestions there but i will comment on the saskatoon hedge. I ripped out a mature cottoneaster privacy hedge and replaced it with saskatoons. Hmm. Slow growing and i didnt see fruit for 3 years. they are still twigs even after several years. Too bad as it was meant to block out the nieghbours trash in the alley plus give fruit. I have put in a row of vertically shoot positioned hardy grapes and have my fingers crossed.

You could have top grafted your cottoneasters into pears.

I think of pears every now and then but i assume they do not ripen fully in Calgary. I wouldnt have guessed i could graft pears onto cottoneaster!

Having grown the running prairie serviceberries, I would find them too short except for a child's maze (and then the running habit would be a nightmare), tasty...but not utilitarian.

I also think of cottoneaster as just a huge source of disease issues in my yard. I have made a lot of effort to remove it entirely. The last bit of it will be replaced with hardy hazelnut next season.

To the OP hazelnut hedges can also be considered. have a look here:
http://www.hardyfruittrees.ca/catalog/nut-tree/hazelbert-a-cross-between-hazel-corylus-americana-and-filbert-corylus-avellana and here too http://www.badgersett.com/info/hazelnuts/hazel2.html

Dave

The hazelnut shrub looks like a great contender! I love that there is fall color too. I just need to find out their growth rate. I don't want to have to wait too long for privacy.

I think that you will find that fast growth and limited size don't go together in the plant world, so when you decide what you want you may be better off getting large plants and taking good care of them, since you have irrigation that's a plus, but it will cost more. cultivating the soil and keeping weeds at bay really helps and while fertilizing helps, to much that carries on into the fall can be a death sentence.

Of course you could also grow a belgian fence or do a horizontal cordon espalier. Truth be told, if you want privacy fast its easier to build a fence. I toyed with a privacy fence as the horizontal espalier grew up thinking that i would take apart the built lumber fence after the living espalier established but opted to be lazy and just let the fence grow alone. Mine is Norkent, Prairie Magic and September Ruby but it can be done with anything you like.

Yeah, we already have a five foot tall fence In the area. That is as high as the HMO will let us go with a fence. There is a road and bike path that are elevated about 4 feet above our yard so the fence doesn't help much with privacy, hence my desire to grow a living fence. We have a swath of land on the other side of the fence along the bike path where we can plant this hedge (quite long and about 15 feet wide). The more reading I do, the more I think elderberries or Highbush cranberries are my solution. Fast growing to 8 to 10 feet, native, zone 3 compatible, easy to grow, useable fruit, etc.

I have loved reading everyone's ideas though! Thanks for your help!