Thank you Christopher. Hollies do well here but supposedly the small leafed varieties are deer favorites. I will take a look at the fargesia bamboo, I have never heard of that variety !

Are you allowed to plant on the other side of the fence? Is it your land?

the paved pad is in your yard? .. what is it??

The paved area is our parking pad. Our lot is steeply sloped with the parking pad at the top, so it is only minimally visible from the back patio, but the walking path is further uphill so more visible.

Floral, the land behind the fence doesn't belong to us but we have permission to plant.

Elaeagnus can take some shade, if not too heavy. It has great screening potential. Maybe you can improve the light without too much effort. Other than that, I'd also consider deciduous plants if they are capable of developing thickly enough, as quite a bit of screening can be achieved with them. Possibly, one of the Mahonias could do ...?

Several Eleagnus are highly invasive in the USA. As are some Mahonias.

I'd opt for something deciduous also. Forsythia is very commonly used for screening around here because it grows fast and densely, and is cheap. It won't bloom in too much shade, but that isn't its primary purpose here.

Go for evergreen. I'd start with Pragense Viburnum and American holly -- neither of which deer are very fond of -- and both are hardy. (rabbits are another story -- so you may have to fence small plants for a while.) I wonder if deer munch on Burford holly (not the dwarf version). Maybe interplant with Agarista populifolia - Florida Doghobble (if you can locate it), a southeastern US native that likes somewhat wet and shade. Aucuba might work -- but I've seen deer graze those some years. Another option would be one of the larger Osmanthus -- like x fortunei or americanus

I don't have a good sense of where you hope to plant and what else is growing there. You'll have to minimize root competition from weeds and brush. If tree roots are pervasive, you'll have a problem getting plants started.

perhaps a pic from further back.. will help us understand the whole situation ....

the problem with planting NOT on your property.. is someone else can cut it down without your input ... and that usually happens a few days after you decide it finally has accomplished the goal ... lol ...

of course.. planting both sides of the fence ... provides a failsafe ....

im not sure how you would deal with it on the parking pad ... besides building a garage.. lol .... which will block the sight line ....

ken

Don't buy these plants, please.

https://www.epicgardening.com/invasive-species-sold-at-garden-centers/?fbclid=IwAR2DFS6XInmB7-suqRRUak4mcCUnb8GHDZdUdohT2YWgVbmtnDHR8GWjd3I

American holly is the only evergreen left in the shrub layer around here.

I second the forsythia suggestion. It is dense enough if there is enough light that it makes a great screen.

If any of the Viburnums are evergreen in your area, consider them.

Mountain laurel/Kalmia latifolia and Rhododendron maximum are fairly shade tolerant if the light isn’t enough for the above suggestions.

Plan to use steel posts with high test fishing line or fencing, or deterrent sprays to protect the shrubs from deer.

If you have enough room on your parking pad, I'd do something like this with a tall growing bamboo in planters.

Is there any reason you can't put a privacy fence similar to this in front of the chain link?

I’d second V. pragense or Viburnum rhytidophyllum.

Maybe you could get away with Viburnum tinus too if the bank is fairly sheltered. Or Prunus caroliniana? Maybe someone with experience of your area can tell us if they would survive.

Wow, thank you all for the excellent suggestions! I am conscious of the fact that whatever I plant could be cut down; however, I think it unlikely having spoken to the person who oversees the area. They take a minimal maintenance approach and unless I planted something massively invasive, they wouldn't bother it.

Forsythia is popular here and could be a good solution, I just worry that it wouldn't get tall enough. Same with a privacy fence - the area is so sloped that people standing on the path are easily 15' above our parking pad. I'll take photos from another angle later to give you a better understanding of the space.

Another vote for some species of holly, tho mine have become deer targets last couple of winters. As said earlier, NOTHING is deer-proof, except maybe plastic. Rhododendrons & yews are other shade-tolerant evergreens, tho they grow rather slowly.

In my yard, yews are ugly bare twigs all year round, courtesy of the deer; they are the first thing stripped even when nothing else is touched. So based on my experience, I wouldn’t ever plant them in a deer prone area, unless they were within a deer proof enclosure.

Here are photos showing a bit more perspective:

From the side, walking path is just barely shown on the right. The car peeking out on the left is ours. The post in the foreground is right next to the sidewalk/street and our drivewaydriveway entrance . trees are mostly right along our fence. I would leave the large ones and any smaller ones that aren't actively growing through the fence.

DH took this one from the parking pa, of me standing in the middle of the walking path.

See, no pat answer. You have gotten an excellent list of plants that will grow with those site conditions. Plant choices for different conditions are rarely a problem. Deer are the problem.

The front runner seems to be American Holly, Ilex opaca. from those in the know up your way. It is a small tree and good screen. I did wonder how elevated the public walk was above the wall and how much height you would need.

I'd love to experiment with a taller selection, (10 to 12 feet) of the Fargesia bamboo. It might confuse the deer completely. Plus it is a grass and can tolerate grazing.

What say you? Do the deer eat bamboo?

I like holly as well. Hemlocks do well in shade, yews, ivy to climb fence. Watch bamboo as it can be highly invasive.

Whatever you pick, I would plant drifts of 5 to 7 plants, or more, and several different plants. That way if the deer love one or if something kills one type of plant, you haven't lost everything.

We just went for a walk along the path and I did some spying on neighboring yards to see how others have dealt with the problem. Turns out most of my neighbors don't seem to care about privacy back there, lol. I did see a couple of bamboo patches but no huge stands (which did not look too badly chewed , so maybe deer don't care for i? ). A few people lined their fences with arborvitae, but that's about it.

DH loves bamboo so I'm thinking that might be worth a shot if I can find a variety that will reach 15'. I like the look of crypotomeria or false cypress too, and those would definitely give me the height I need. Maybe a combination. I noticed that the area gets more sun than I thought from the south because of the placement of trees and houses on that side, so that might broaden my options.

I'm pretty sure deer won't eat bamboo but watch out for pandas. If you don't plant in containers be sure to get a clumping bamboo - it is not invasive.

Also, if you have room for containers on the parking pad, you can elevate them to give the bamboo more height.

Wait until you get yours looking good. Everyone will copy you.

Any bamboo that reaches 15' will have to be Phyllostachys, which can really take over, once established. You will never get rid of it. But it will grow very slowly at first -- probably 3 to 5 years to fill in as a screen.

The hardiest clumpers are not quite as tall. Look into Fargesia -- but they are pretty expensive and slow at first.

FWIW, way too cold for V. tinus. They will survive mild winters here (northeastern corner of Mary-land) but was killed outright by polar vortex winter I. A winter that about 7 large camellia bushes survived.

Thanks, davidrt28. V tinus is a common workhorse shrub here and I wasn't sure how much cold it could take. Nor how much cold the OP would experience. What do you think about the Prunus caroliniana suggestion?

Japanese Plum Yew (Cephalotaxus harringtonii ) is supposedly very deer resistant and it's also a shade tolerant evergreen.

Of the three, holly, bamboo, hemlock, the hemlock will grow the fastest and give you the height you want plus some. Hemlock was near obliterated by the wooly adelgid of course. A released predator beetle here in NC seems to be working. What is the current status of hemlock in the Hudson River valley with the adelgid? It may be worth a closer look and an act of restoration for the native ecosystem. And the deer with hemlock?

Apparently hemlock adelgid is an issue in my area. Not sure I want to take the chance. The Japanese plum yews are lovely but looks like they won't get tall enough to solve my problem. If I decide to use a tree, cryptomeria (Yoshino?) looks like a very good contender.

Christopher, the adelgid swept thru west MD some yrs ago, but numbers seem to have tailed-off considerably. Haven't heard why that might be, but that can happen to introduced pests (like the gypsy moth) -- something eventually can catch up w/them -- disease, predators, parasites, etc.

floral,

P. caroliniana is hardy in an upper south zone 7, but I think it's probably not quite reliable enough for the OP's purposes. You need something super reliable for screening. If a collector just wanted to try one, I would say go for it. I like Dave's recommendations the best, I lean toward Prague Viburnum. I have seen hedges of that in the outer NYC suburbs so it is solidly zn 6 hardy.

Thanks for the info. davidrt28. We have such a huge multiplicity of bles available to us here it's hard to conceive of the kind of cold the OP would experience.

" it's hard to conceive of the kind of cold the OP would experience"

Oh believe me I know!

OTOH, imagine the irritation a Brit, or someone horticulturally minded from another Commonwealth country*, would experience knowing that...although there is actually still a fine selection of broadleaf evergreens for zones 6 and 7 on the east coast, they are underplanted! It's only really in southeastern Virginia and points south and west that what I see as the bias against them, vanishes. It's a bias on both sides. Punters don't know they are often the better choice: 9 out of 10 persons in the OP's position would have gone to Home Depot, asked a teenaged kid working the outdoor section what plant was needed here, and gotten leyland cypress...a terrible choice for a number of reasons! And nurseries don't promote BLEs like they should because they are probably a bit slower to produce, and a little harder to market, than some other types of plants. Other than a couple 'grandma's favorites' like ironclad rhododendrons.

I was driving around the Main Line yesterday (posh western suburb of Philly) and noticed that the clearly 'old money' estates/piles (LOL) - established decades ago** - were places where you had a good chance of seeing better informed horticultural practices. Hedges of broadleaf evergreens or at least yew...trimmable into a nice shape. OTOH, the in-fill McMansions - mercifully less common in that part of the states - were where you saw stuff like leyland or thuja green giants on 1 meter centers - already too close and about to crowd each other out. And weeping prunus used as 'foundation' plants, where they would quickly outgrow their positions. American crap landscaping. My point is not to classify types of rich people but to say "better informed horticultural practices" are vanishing, even in a part of the country once well known for them. (SE PA having been a hotbed of American horticulture before the west coast took over on some fronts at least)

* or heck, even one of our PNW posters on their forum!

** that's old for a young country!

Also, consider Viburnum rhytidophyllum or some of the hybrids of it. Should be fairly deer-resistant.