radock03,

A few questions first. How long and wide an area are we talking about? What's your soil type and elevation? Other than screening, what do you want the plants do (edible fruit, wildlife habitat, etc.)? Are you looking for strictly evergreen/conifer or would a mix with deciduous plants be ok? Will you be able to water the trees/shrubs at planting and once a week during the growing season till established, which might be a year or longer? Would you be able to water the new plantings during a dry winter? Not an issue this year, but in the future it might be.

Fast growing usually equals weak-wooded, which might be an issue if this is an open, windy area. Wind and heavy snow can damage plants, particularly fast growing plants. I'd steer clear of a monoculture (all one plant type). If water access is an issue, it will limit your selections.

Sorry for the multiple questions. I don't want to start making suggestions till I know a bit more about your goals.

If you're ok with starting with small plants, CSU recently sent out their tree order forms. This would be a great opportunity to try out some native plants and you could get 25 - 50 seedlings for the price of one tree at your local nursery. They also have one gallon trees for $9. I'll include links below with the order form, current available inventory and a link to your local conservation district. CSU will ship the trees to you, or you can get an order form from the El Paso/Woodland Park District and pick up trees from their location.

CSU Tree Order info.

Updated inventory list

El Paso County Conservation District

If you are looking for larger plants, more instant gratification, the info above might not interest you, but I thought it would be a good starting point.

Barb

Not a tree, but a vine......silver lace vine.

Mine has grown like crazy, but I'm in Colo Spgs.

Thanks for the quick responses. There are multiple pine trees with about 30-50ft between them. I just want to fill in the area between them, so the road on the other side is not as visible. Elevation here in Black Forest is about 7000ft(we are just outside Colorado Springs on the NE side). Deciduous is fine, and I can make it so I can water over there once a week. I havent really thought about if I would want fruit, etc.. more concerned with the screening. Its in the middle of the woods, so its not exposed directly to wind and sun(at least fully). Thanks for those links that is great!

radok03,

You're welcome and I'm glad I didn't overwhelm you!

Here's a link to trees and shrubs for higher altitudes. 7,500 feet seems to be the dividing line between being able to plant most anything that will grow here and needing to stick to high altitude plants. Some of these are native, some are not.

Trees and shrubs for mountain areas

What I like about the list is it gives you botanical and common names of plants, the sun exposure (FS = full sun, PS = part shade), moisture requirements, ultimate height and spread and general info about each plant.

Start by eliminating what doesn't fit your site. For example, if your place is full sun and the plant prefers shade, that plant is probably not a good fit, unless you can plant it where a pine will give it some shade. Or a plant is too big or too small. The first tree on the list is Acer ginnala, the Ginnala maple. It's a great tree. It doesn't like a soil pH over 7.5. My pH is 7.9, so that tree is not likely to be happy at my place. it doesn't mean you can't try it, just know going in what the challenges are. Some of my favorite plants have been experiments!

Once you've narrowed down your choices you can start Googling for pics of the plants to see what you like. Then the fun process of finding them to buy begins!

Barb

Hi Radok,

Here are a couple more links from CSU. The first is a good "at a glance" guide to some of the basic trees and shrubs, and the second has additional info along with pics of some of them. I think some of the shrubs would probably work really well for your purpose. A lot of them grow tall enough for your needs, and some of them are really good for providing wildlife shelter and food.

Barb is our resident tree expert around here, so if you come up with questions about specific trees/shrubs, I'll defer to her for those answers!

http://static.colostate.edu/client-files/csfs/pdfs/SpeciesSuitabilityGuideforColorado.pdf

http://static.colostate.edu/client-files/csfs/pdfs/08byrgd-www.pdf

Skybird

Rhodos and Kalmia (Mt. Laurel) often do well on the edge of woods, and are fast growing, bushy shrubs.