What kind of fence is it?

It's a wood fence but it's not in great shape. It's why I want to cover it up. I don't own it so there's nothing I can do about it.

There are no shrubs you can have that tall that can be 1' thick. It will need to be 4' or 5' thick at least. Neither can I imagine Amur River Privet being a best choice ... maybe the cheapest choice or the most available choice.

I am thinking that maybe these two posts are related.

https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/5901578/privet-hedge-against-fence#n=1

Sure sounds like an almost identical situation!

Same situation, but one in New England and one in the PNW.

Privet is a poor choice for New England since it seeds via birds into wild areas. To my nose, the scent isn’t pleasant, and it looks fairly homely much of the year. And as others have mentioned, it is too wide for this use. Pruning and the fence’s shade would leave it with largely bare branches with a tuft of green on top.

I would get some nice trellises or even use wires or welded wire fencing fastened to the posts or to added posts to grow vines such as clematis or the native honeysuckle, Lonicera sempervirens. Depending on what is meant by a “small” yard, you could add some smaller flowering trees in the corners or perhaps a couple along the fence to give some added height.

If possible, adding a photo looking down on the yard or clipped from Google satellite imagery showing the back side of the house and the yard would help, or otherwise a sketch with length and width measurements and location of access points such as gates or doors from the house. Right now we can say privet is a poor choice, but would want some idea of location and demensions for Useful suggestions.

How about espaliered Manhattan euonymus? It's evergreen, elegant with a shiny leaf, will achieve the height you want while being pruned tight. You can attach it to some fan trellises in front of the fence and let it grow up on its own. It's stiff enough that it shouldn't need support.

There are no shrubs you can have that tall that can be 1' thick.

Oh yes there are for your part of the world yardvaark. There are a number of plants in the Araliaceae family called Panax and Aralia that grow straight up like walking sticks, some to heights of 20 feet.

I meant of commonly available plants for the landscape. Pictures of these things (Panax and Aralia) don't show them being all that skinny. I suppose to keep them that way would require some work; it wouldn't occur naturally.

The Aralia that I know is Sun King, and it gets as wide as tall, over 6’ in the one garden where I have seen it in person.

I know what you meant. I probably should have been more species specific but was too lazy to look it up. Polyscias guilfoylei. This is just one cultivar of many used for tall skinny hedges in the tropics. One foot wide, about as close as you can get with no pruning required.

So we need a Yankee version of that plant. :-)

You could achieve that with Ilex crenata 'Sky Pencil'. But the cost with enough plants mature enough to make an impact would be prohibitive!!

Sky pencil is horrid to prune. Most gardeners don't know how. They need to be carefully layered. Beware sky pencil!

There are varieties of tightly growing, tall thin arborvitae that you can find at good nurseries. If you have the means to buy enough individual plants, they will do the trick. They aren't going to stay 1 foot thick, however.

Privet loses its leaves in the winter. I have never understood people putting up a privacy fence made of a decisuous plant. You get no privacy when the leaves are on the ground; all you see is sticks. Bare sticks. But if you want a privet hedge, you will need to keep it pruned. Find someone who knows what they are doing to do the pruning.

For an evergreen hedge in New England that has a tight, privace-creating form, there are a number of options. All of them will need to be kept pruned. That's just the way it is with hedges.

Look at varieties of holly, Japanese holly, boxwood, juniper, chamaecyparis, and arborvitae. Each of these have cultivars that grow in a columnar shape, so their diameters stay relatively narrow. You could buy a bunch of individual plants and place them close enough together to cover your fence, then prune as they grow.

All of them, whether columnar or not, in any form, can be pruned to shape by a gardener who knows what they are doing. Some varieties can be bought that grow slowly, so pruning is needed only once a season. As a home gardener, you can learn to prune. It's very satisfying. You get immediate gratification, like getting a haircut makes you look much better, and mowing the lawn makes it look much better. The results are immediate.

You will need someone who knows how to prune to keep any type of hedge in good form.

You could with Sky Pencil and some time, but I wouldn't recommend that against a 6' solid fence or for New England or places with heavy snow.

NHBabs the closest native aralia to the tropical Polyscias growth habit is the Devils Walking Stick, Aralia spinosa. That tends to be a colony forming spreader though with just the leaves on top. The tropicals stay as single shrubs holding leaves well to the bottom.

IME, Sky Pencil holly rarely ever needs any pruning! Just a shearing off the top if desired to even it off or snipping an errant wayward stem. But nothing on a routine or annual basis.

Sky Pencil, if shaved off on the top, will grow wider and wider at the top and stay narrow at the bottom. Eventually its width at the top will spread wide and start bending over from its own weight. The bottom will not be encouraged to create new growth, so it will get thinner and thinner over time. When you get snow stuck to the wide top, woe be the results. You'll then need to tie it together for the rest of its life. Here's a video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzwnPRMPrKw

^^ Never had that happen. And I've been using these in landscape designs for years! Rarely had one get any wider than about 15" from top to bottom and if left unpruned, the top tends to stay much narrower.....like the very top growth of an unpruned arbovitae would do.

Perhaps that's the difference,,,,just don't prune them!!

If you do live in areas where you receive plenty of snowfall, you may want to temporarily tie them up to prevent splaying from the snow weight, just as one would do with arborvitaes.

This is what you want Sky Pencil to look like when mature. Simply beautiful! Stunning. It has branches that stop at all levels; they don't all go to the top. For this reason it's a little wider in its middles than at the bottom and top.

This is not what you want, widest and splayed on top, narrow on bottom.

That splayin starts with shearing the tops like this, which encourages branching and widening where the cuts have been made. You can see in this image the new growth crowding at the flat tops of these plants.

Worst case scenario. The plant on the right needed to be tied together, or pruned, or something. Not sure why it looks so awful while the other beside it looks ok-ish.

If someone here has maintained Sky Pencils over time and knows how to get them to look like the first two images, please tell us how you did it. I'm seeing the usual internet sites saying never prune it.

Here's an excellent webpage talking in depth about Sky Pencil and its maintenance.

http://www.louistheplantgeek.com/a-gardening-journal/609-ilex-crenata-sky-pencil

There's a few errant branches visible even in liguidfeet's first and second photos - I've seen thin, floppy 'Sky Pencil' in nursery sizes in my area for years. With clearly no topping being required to have them start losing their shape.

Irish yew is the same way. Some in my area fall open and become essentially useless, others stay together well enough to get 40' tall. However - unlike with the holly - these may consist of more than one clone.

I think Sky Pencils are hard to grow so that they look like those first pictures.

The SP look great in the first two pics. Who wouldn't want that??

In the first two pictures they are in full sun in an open space and not crammed against a six foot solid fence or the wall of a house. That might nave some bearing on the outcome.