how much space are you willing to give up for the bed you plant in??? .. all 9 feet .... leave 3 feet of grass ... etc???

ken

Ideally, would give up to 4ft or thereabouts, not much more than that I think.

In my area, Knock-outs would need frequent pruning to stay at four feet wide. From the looks of your beautiful lawn, I think you irrigate and any shrub will reach it's max size with you ;). The nicest hydrangeas I've seen reside in NJ, so I'd go with mophead or lacecap hydrangeas. Endless Summer would possibly grow too large but there are many smaller rebloomers available.

You need to leave 2-3 feet between any shrub and the fence, which doesn't leave you much room. Have you considered flowering vines? Or tall flowers like sunflowers, hollyhocks, etc.?

Floribunda roses are also an option for your zone. We are growing 'Easy Does It' here in 5b and loving it. Roses are hard to beat for long lasting color.

Another option for roses could be climbers along the fence. If you mount a wire mesh or any other preferred netting on the fence, roses can be trained to climb both vertically and horizontally across the fence. I think the 4-5 ft ground width should probably work, depending on the rose variety.

I am not familiar with Floribundas or the climbing variety of roses. Might you have a picture of them to look at and would they grow in NJ? Thank You.

A series of roses that would be highly disease resistant/ no spray in NJ and stay relatively compact is called "Drift". Google "Sweet Drift", "Apricot Drift", etc to see photos. Another group of roses that does well in the mid-Atlantic is the Fairy Tale series: Google "Lion's Fairy Tale". The Fairy Tale roses may grow too large for your site. Most roses defoliate from blackspot without regular fungicide treatment in your area, so your choices are somewhat limited. Garden Web has a Roses forum which you can consult if your heart is set on roses. It may be too late in the season to plant roses in your area.

I recommended floribundas because they have a classic look to them but they are generally easier for the rose newbie, and the bushes do not usually get very large. Consulting the Gardenweb rose forum is good advice.

You will find a list of suitable roses for your area at this link.

Here's another way to search for roses:

Go to this website: https://www.heirloomroses.com/roses.html

Use the filters to narrow down your options. Choose a bloom color, a high rating, height and width, hardiness zone(6), continual bloom, etc. Once you've whittled down the choices to about ten, start reading reviews on the site and do a google search for those names. Pay particular attention to black spot/disease resistance.

Make a list and see if your local nursery carries any of them.

Is the fence yours or the neighbors? This makes a difference if you're thinking of growing things on it or attaching things to it. How tall do you want the planting to get?

FWIW If I was the neighbor and paid for that fence, I wouldn't want anything attached to it (I'm in a Boston suburb - similar HCOL to OP - and due to high labor costs in MA and NJ, fences are very expensive). And it seems it might be vinyl/composite not wood - if so then attaching anything will permanently damage the fence.

I'd plant trees that stay 15'-20' tall and wide as a privacy screen. We have Autumn Serviceberry - which has pros and cons - but I'm sure others will have better suggestions. I love looking out my 2nd floor windows seeing the Serviceberry's leafs/flowers/branches, and not so much the neighbors. If the neighbor wants to cut the branches as they grow over and past the fence, that's fine - they will be doing the l'espalier-ing for you, but you'll still have branches to screen the view.

Right now I'm really high on several shrubs that are giving a beautiful fall color display in my garden and I don't see why they wouldn't be suitable. Fothergilla Mt. Airy and Disanthus cercidifolius. You could mix in several shrubby roses a la David Austin for summer color. I like to mix other plants with roses because the Rose plant itself, without flowers, is not always that attractive, particularly in winter, though there are shrubby roses that are. The Fothergilla is quite upright, the Disanthus taller than wide but wider. A third colorful shrub for me is Itea Virginica.

This shrub is over 20 years old, probably older, so not to worry about size as they are fairly slow. Forgot to mention, it has really pretty flowers in the spring.

Here is the Disanthus, in its first season in my garden, and not yet in full fall color. It is a pretty plant all year with especially pretty blue green leaves all summer.