some ideas:

That is weird. I went looking for the original post to see whether anyone else had responded and it was gone.

I know, strange. Do you think it was because I borrowed a photo of a fence like mine from the internet? The owner of the photo may have objected? This photo is actually my fence.

Thanks for the mockups, Doug and Vstavay. I had thought about including a small tree. I need to make a plan view drawing. I have LD software that does mockups but it’s 20 yrs. old I doubt it would even run now.

I am glad you had noted suggestions! I did not want to retype all that.

I think that is a very nice combination of plants........I can see Babs' hand in it :-) However, I think the planting bed is far too narrow. Some of those shrubs will easily exceed 5' in width!! That's the problem with many of these mock ups offered for inspiration - they are not to scale and the shrubs/plants shown will not fit easily into the space provided!!

I would extend the planting bed to at least 8' deep (deeper if you can manage). And then you have the option of placement for some of the shrubs to other than a tight, straight row. That is never a good look nor a very natural one.

I’m thinking about a simple, more formal look. I’ve made a full hedge of Little Limes with some landscape roses at the ends to reduce the height for traffic sight lines at the end of the driveway. Not a natural look, but I think it looks tidy and functional. I’ve played around with a mix of evergreen and different foliage colors, different forms, etc., and can’t come up with anything that doesn’t look chaotic to me. I don’t want perennials out there, I have plenty to take care of inside the yard. Just shrubs, low maintenance, deer resistant.

I’m also thinking of adding some kousas inside the fence line for a taller layer of privacy. Maybe too much white, but the kousas would go by while the hydrangeas would keep their flowers until fall.

Japanese Black pines or Twisted Hollywood Junipers for the main anchor plants. Both have a seaside vibe and don't mind salty air. Then you can plant something lower between them.

Interesting choices, Dave. I think they’ll get a bit bigger than I need in this area. I was planning on keeping it under 8 ft.

Consider Black Dragon Cryptomeria.

This is basically what my professionally designed border would look like, though not all blooming at the same time obviously. Center is Vanilla Strawberry Hydrangea paniculata, on each side two Spirea Neon Flash, followed by two groups of three Lilac Palibin. At the end some roses, carpet specified forgot the cultivar. Kousas behind the fence.

The lilacs would be done by the time the Spirea and roses bloomed, then the Kousa and hydrangea. Spirea would mostly go by and hydrangea would start changing flower color. Kousa would go by, roses would rebloom some, hydrangea hanging on till fall.

I’m not wild about the color of the hydrangea, and thought about replacing it with a softer color. The Spirea are a bit short for screening. Lilacs are OK. Would deepen the bed.

Thoughts? I hope my designer doesn’t read this.

My thoughts are leaning to something like what I posted earlier, Little Limes but broken up a bit by roses to prevent them from being a solid mass of one color. I actually lose sleep over this stuff, it’s like picking out paint colors. Why do some people make it seem so easy?

I'm not a designer, but I love a good row of hydrangeas. Looks classic just to do the one row with the roses on the end.

Anything else and you would definitely need to widen to allow depth to your plantings.

Thanks so much for your thoughts. Back to the drawing board.

Blue to avoid the unmatched whites. Nantucket Blue. This was actually my first idea, but the guy who was going to do my digging didn’t like the idea. He has a lot of opinions. I think his point was the extra pruning needed over the paniculata?

Paniculata is easier and blooms more reliably here and can bloom for 3-4 months. I don't know if you will get reliable blooms on any of the macrophyllas or even if it is generally reliable, how you would feel about having them not bloom if there was a late frost or a polar vortex.

I might be more inclined to use a pink flowering dogwood and Little Limes, but that would be for my area or if your area doesn't get reliable macrophylla blooms.

Macrophyllas have bloomed pretty reliably here, and the Nantucket Blue is one of the Endless Summers. I like the pink flowering dogwood, the pink Kousa not so much. Thanks for the ideas.

I think this looks really good.

I realize that the dogwoods will be done by the time the hydrangeas bloom. But it still looks really good, lol.

If you prefer white, do a white flowering dogwood and LL hydrangea since the overlap will be little if at all so unmatched whites won’t be an issue. You now have even more possible choices from which you have to decide. ;>)

Here are roughly seasonally adjusted mockups of what the border might look like using the original design. Kousa dogwoods behind the fence, left to right carpet rose, 3 Palibin lilacs, 2 Neon Flash Spirea, 3 Vanilla Stawb. Hydrangea, 2 Spirea, 3 lilacs. Something else at the end, not sure what. Bed would be slightly deeper than original photo.Apologize in advance for the crude mockups.

I personally am not fond of VS’s floppiness and were it mine I would be far more likely to use another choice including Little Lime or even Little Quickfire. I don’t think that the Kousas would overlap much if at all with the LL. Right now my Kousa is starting to fade and my regular Quickfire is just starting to bloom.

i like that there is something of interest in all but the winter months when the fence will stand out.

Thanks for your comments, much appreciated.

Use evergreen plants on the ends (avoid Thuja occidentalis as that is a winter staple for deer), figure on 15-35 ft sizes (high and wide) for the dogwoods if those end up being included - they're not going to grow as parasol shapes and you're not going to be able to prune them much at all. Not seeing the problem with unmatched whites, in fact all the same exact shade of white between different kinds of plants sounds odd, even stilted - see page linked to below. Whipped-topping-on-strawberry waffle effect produced by a long row of white not as interesting as a more mixed planting such as was suggested by paid designer(?). And I see no other formal (geometrically symmetric) elements in the scene for a formal planting to relate to (except for the fence - but I think the informal designs of the houses visible around and behind overrule this. And the fence curves near the ends, as though intended to not appear rigid and geometric).

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=white+garden&qpvt=white+garden&FORM=IGRE

Thanks, yes a paid designer. The plan on the other side of the fence calls for four kousas, single trunk, limbed up. Does seem like they will get crowded pretty fast. Don’t know how easy it will be to find single trunks. I know they grow fairly quickly, I planted 8 of them at my former home and watched them grow for 11 years before we moved. I do love a white garden. The rest of the property is informal beds, though there are two areas with long straight stone walls.

Dogwoods don't like to have the trunk exposed and - yes - Kousa in particular tends to be low forking - at least in the open (this is true of many other small- or comparatively small-growing kinds of trees also). Plus Kousa is a bark interest tree, when bark interest trees are grown with single trunks the bark effect is not as good.

With that fence there the straight lines and full length or nearly full length repetition of some of the plants in these schemes kind of makes the whole look like a billboard. Your best bet might be to follow the paid for design - but using instead one each of four different kinds of trees, chosen to contrast or harmonize with the particular kinds of shrubs that are directly in front of them.

Also the whole would look softer and more fully realized if flowering climbers (clematis, honeysuckle, roses...) were trained onto the fence. Again choosing ones that had some kind of specific visual interaction with the shrubs in front of them. Even as comparatively fancy as it is the fence - it is just as fence, after all - still does not have enough interest of its own for a lot of it to be visible. And it is being used in this arrangement as a backdrop. Plus the lattice like style of it seems as though intended to serve as a support for climbing plants. So it looks unfulfilled without anything growing on it.