gardenchloe,

Skyrocket juniper (juniperus scopulorum 'Skyrocket') and Taylor juniper (juniperus viginiana 'Taylor') are what immediately come to mind. Why the 15' cap on height? Is it under a power line? Both of these might ultimately go to 20 feet.

I think the winter damage you're seeing around now is a combination of 2 drought years followed by the 70 degree temp swing in October. There aren't a lot of trees that can come through that unscathed. It may be shaping up to be another drought year and juniper will take that better than most conifers.

Barb

For some reason around here they sell a green, flat leafed (not sure that is the right term) juniper that dies for everyone. I have no idea why it is even sold in our area but all the new homes or people who relandscape generally have alot of them. Then they die within a year or two. Stay away from anything grass green. Go for one with the silver/blue or greyish tone. The foliage should be more narrow and not resemble a flat leaf.

We have lots of privacy junipers. Some are being kept narrow and some are allowed to grow more naturally. Generally they all way outgrow the tag and on-line info. We trim them to fit the space and will show you some results. Also a tree trimmer taught us the trick of only trimming the branches that come out for the ones we wanted to keep narrow and allowing the ones that go up to keep growing and that has helped alot.

These are 5 skyrocket junipers. Maybe 20 ft tall. Trimmed back to keep the driveway accessible. The green is paper thin at this point. They do not have alot of internal green so it is easy to trim into the wood. This is the south side.

This is the north side. Originally there were some aspens on this side that probably forced the junipers to grow crooked. Also we get alot of north wind in the winter that has probably affected them.

Side view.

These are two baby sky rockets after the snow bend their branches down. This seems to happen to all my junipers at times. When they are bigger we trim out the branches that get bent. Not sure what to do with such misshapen young ones.

Next up, Moonglow junipers.

We mostly have Moonglow junipers. They survive everything and are very drought tolerant. Seem to be more strong willed about growing straight than the Skyrocket that were pushed around by the other trees.

Here are some we are keeping trimmed back to keep access to our water fall. This is a more full through the center juniper than the Skyrocket. It is the one where we use the branches going up we keep and branches headed out we trim method to keep them thin.

This is the only one that has been trimmed so far this year. You can see the branches going up were kept while those headed out were trimmed off. I can see from this picture we need to trim more along the top.

These are Moonglows that we are keeping in the 5-6 ft deep range. Side view.

You can see that to keep gate access we need to keep these thinner. They have not been trimmed this year. We generally have to to it every couple of years. Also the neighbor does not want them on his fence.

More natural Moonglow to follow.

This is a Moonglow that has been allowed to get round but is trimmed to
keep access to the bench. It is huge. We also have to trim it
back off our own fence. You would not want to get these for your space unless you planned to keep it trimmed up. If we did not trim it the bench and fence would have been eaten by now.

You can see that due to the internal branching habit even with triming you still have internal green. Some Junipers, like our Skyrockets and some of our low growing ones are only green on the outside and it is very easy to trim into deadwood.

Closer view of bench area.

I do see some people with better behaved Junipers but they probably trim to shape yearly as otherwise they get rangy like ours.

In short, I don't have a suggestion, just giving you our experiences.

Thank you so much, tree barb and mmmm12. Treebarb, I have a tiny yard. I was hoping for a row of not super tall evergreens for privacy but not growing out of control. Mmmm12, thanks for the pictures. They really help me visualize how big they get.

There may be other ways to accomplish your goal. Are you trying to screen the neighbor's view into your yard or your view into other's yards, or both? Is there a fence in the area to screen and how high? What are the dimensions of the planting area? Any chance of a pic of the area?

I've seen people use vines like clematis or trumpet vine to accomplish the same thing, although vines wouldn't provide year round screening. Deciduous shrubs might be a better fit, size wise, but also not year round screening. You may be able to combine all three plant types to make a screen.

Moonglow is color variation of Rocky Mountain Juniper, a full sized tree that can go 30' X 15'. Woodward is another skinny juniper that gets to 12 - 20' X 2-4', but might be harder to find.

If you have to shear a plant, it wasn't given proper spacing at planting. I've been guilty of that myself and have learned to research ultimate plant sizes before planting. Junipers in particular don't take shearing well. We forget that in addition to the plant's size, we need room between the plant and the fence or structure to do maintenance.

mmmm12, unless those splayed branches are broken, I wouldn't trim them. One thing you can do, in fall, is to tie them with twine, not loosely, but not super tight either. Gently guide those wayward branches up, then start at the base and wrap twine around the tree in a spiral, then tie off at the top of the plant. Remove in spring. That'll help prevent splaying until the tree develops the strength needed to stand up to our storms. Unfortunately, trees aren't invincible and we have had some really rough weather years lately.

Thanks Treebarb for the suggestions on how to treat our wayward baby Skyrockets.

https://plantaddicts.com/emerald-green-arborvitae/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwzN71BRCOARIsAF8pjfgm0H4zyJyy_8XsDf1145pYmLy78OTxMt00dtG-fEXswZXqDyWv_AcaAu0xEALw_wcB

We have had a lot of damage from heavy snow on upright. Junipers in the past.

We planted an Arnold Sentinel pine at the front corner of our house. much more resillent. Grows to max 20ft and max 4'-5' wide.

here is an internet photo

Here it is at The Tree Farm - they say it gets bigger

http://www.thetreefarm.com/pine-arnold-s-sentinel

I'm not a Tree Person, but I've always been under the impression that Arborvitae sunscald easily in Colorado sun. Maybe Barb will be along with an opinion on that one at some point, but it's something I certainly would check out more before paying for one. I love them, with their "flat leaves," or needles, or whatever they're called!

Skybird

Thanks, Jerry! I love that evergreen. It's stunning. De zi, Do you have good success with these Emeral Green Arbovitae? I see tons of them at Lowe's but I also seen bunch of damaged ones at people's yards.

Skybird, I agree with you. My impression is that Arborvitae gets damaged easily in Colorado both in sun and coldness. I don't want to go through the exercise of planting them then replacing them again in a year.

Treebarb, I was hoping for something easy to maintain instea of getting tons of leaves to clean up around the fence each autumb thus I was hoping to shop of evergreens. The goal is to provide privacy from both sides of the fence.

The Emerald Green one is the one that tends to die in our area.

Gardenchloe, I didn't think of this when I did that quick post, but Barb's suggestion about using a vine for a privacy screen is a really good one too--and way faster than any tree! If you get the "heavy weight" wood lattice and then "frame it" with 1 x 2's or something similar before you put them up--to keep them from falling apart after a few years, you can grow almost any vine up them. I'd recommend grapes, they grow amazingly fast, and they come back from the old wood every year. They do lose their leaves in fall, but in a couple years you'd have enough of a "tangle" of vines to provide more privacy than I think you'd suspect! AND, you get something good to eat in the bargain! There are several really good table grapes you can get these days! The purple Clematis, Jackmanii, would be another good choice for something which, as I recall, isn't invasive--and in a few years, it too would provide some pretty good cover, even in winter.

There's another Clematis, a white one called Sweet Autumn which is horrendously invasive, so stay away from that one! The ones with the large flowers would work too, but I'm sure would take much longer to cover the lattice than Jackmanii. There's a white one with "dinner plate" size flowers that I LOVE and would like to have some day--Henryi--you could conceivably mix some of the larger flowered ones in with Jackmanii!

While some of them can be very pretty, I recommend staying away from any of the invasive vines--which is most of them! I do NOT recommend honeysuckle, Virginia creeper, trumpet vine, hops, Aristolochia/Dutchman's Pipe, Boston ivy (or English ivy!), silver lace vine, or Lathyrus/perennial sweet pea. There are others that are invasive too, I just can't think of all of them right now, but if you decide on a vine, check it out thoroughly before you plant it! [How about some kudzu? ;-D ]

But I think vines on lattice could be a pretty good, and fast, solution for at least part of your fence line!

Skybird

https://wp-media.patheos.com/blogs/sites/766/2017/08/kudzu-4.jpg

It's funny. After looking at mmmm12's pictures, I ran into her today when I biked. She was looking to trim her evergreens. Mmmm12, your evergreens look amazing and so uniformed. I wish I have the space for something like that.

Jerry, We talked about how becautiful that Arnold Sentinel pine looks. Does it drop some needles?

Skybird and Treebarb, Thanks so much for the suggestion!

I think Jerry made an excellent pick for you! Austrian pines do really well here. If you prefer the look of pine over juniper, also check out pinus Cembra (Swiss stone pine) cultivars like 'Chalet' or 'Blue Mound', also narrow and also slow growers, maybe too slow for your purpose. I would steer clear of strobus (White pine) here, as pretty as they are. We're too alkaline, unless your yard's ph is closer to high 6's or low 7's. Arborvitae is plenty cold tolerant, it's the sun and wind that beat them up here. In full sun, without wind protection, I wouldn't use them.

There are narrow blue spruce and norway spruce cultivars that might be worth checking out, too.

Where I'm getting stymied here is you want a screen, so something fairly fast growing. The trees that will do that, will also keep right on growing past your height cap. Dwarf conifers will stay inbounds, but will take decades to reach the screening height.

All evergreens will shed needles at some point. The Austrian pine sheds needles every 3 years.

Weeping white spruce might work for you. Super skinny, but would likely exceed the 15' feet tall you are looking for, in about 9 years. I planted a couple that are doing well in Laramie, WY. I also have an 'Algonquin Pillar' Swiss stone pine that's handsome and is supposed to stay narrow, but I don't think as narrow as the other cembra cultivars that TreeBarb listed above.

Rossnagl's "From Disaster to" post has a picture of the weeping white spruce tree, center at the base of the power pole. I also have that tree here, love it!

It would help to know the dimensions of the planting area. How wide and long and is there an existing fence?

I have a giant lilac that provides some privacy from one neighbor. But it took a long time to get large enough to do so. Most trees will take a long time to get there as well. The problem with vines is that they can be hard to control.

I saw some Euonymus today at Home Depot that was trained onto a large trellis almost like espalier. That was pretty cool and might work too. But would probably require maintenance as well.

treebarb, I do like the silver or blue spruce and what Jerry posted. . I am hoping for maybe three of them that are not too big so it will be easy to plant and not super costly. I will measure the area tomorrow and let you know. I appreciate the information.

popmama, yes, that sounds really cool but yes, it may require some maintenance. Maybe we shall go check it out sometime. =)

I know we don't have dimensions yet, but I put this list together, just to give you a variety of options. The list below includes a few that might get wider than you want, but maybe worth a look:

Colorado Blue spruce, Picea pungens:

http://www.thetreefarm.com/spruce-columnar-blue

http://www.thetreefarm.com/spruce-blue-mountain

Weeping white spruce, Picea glauca pendula:

http://www.thetreefarm.com/spruce-weeping-white

Norway spruce, Picea abies 'Cupressina':

http://www.thetreefarm.com/spruce-norway-columnar

Pine:

http://www.thetreefarm.com/pine-arnold-s-sentinel

http://www.thetreefarm.com/pine-bosnian-columnar

http://www.thetreefarm.com/pine-swiss-stone-blue-mound

http://www.thetreefarm.com/pine-mugho-tannenbaum

A few wildcards, just for fun. These are wayward growers, they won't grow straight up, part of their charm, but maybe not the look you're going for:

http://www.thetreefarm.com/spruce-the-blues-weeping-colorado

The serbian linked below probably wouldn't like full sun, but how cool!

http://www.thetreefarm.com/spruce-serbian-weeping

On spacing, take the mature width, near the bottom of each page from the links and divide by 2. If a plant reaches a mature width of 10 feet, divide by 2 and plant at least 5 feet apart. I might add a foot to that so you can water, weed and mulch around the trees. Don't plant right on the property line or right up against a fence or corner. For example, if the tree you like is 10 feet wide at maturity, plant it 8 to 10 feet back from a fence or corner, so you can get around it to do maintenance.

A few other random thoughts. The pandemic has created some price gouging, on all fronts. Prices seem higher to me than last year. You'll have to shop around to see who has what, in sizes you can afford and can physically plant yourself unless you plan to have the nursery do it. Having the nursery plant seems wildly expensive, but you'd likely get a 100% warranty on the tree for a year. If you plant yourself, you'll probably get a 50% warranty for the first year.

I don't think there is any substitute for going to the nursery and seeing the trees in person. I would also look and ask for fresh stock. Conifers can take a long time to show damage. Last year's stock went through that 70 degree temp swing and may look fine now, but might not in 6 months. Conifers are best planted in spring here. It might be worth waiting until next year to get fresh, healthy stock. I've also seen a trend of nurseries not up-potting when they should and trees really need to have their roots spread out at planting. We're getting to the end of prime planting time for conifers. That doesn't mean you can't still plant, but just be aware that planting in the 90 degree temps coming next week is less than optimal. Another consideration is shading the trees a bit at planting. A tree fresh in from the pacific northwest is likely to burn here, so you may have to erect a shade structure till they get acclimated, just like any other plant.

The Tree Farm is a great place to see multiple specimens of a tree you're interested in, some have slightly different habits that you can't see from a website. O'Toole's generally has good, reasonably priced trees, but maybe only 1 or 2 of each.

Barb

Awesome list treebarb.

The second one we looked at was Pinus leucodermis hel. 'Iseli Fastigiate'

Several in the list I like.

Here is the picture. The fence is 18 feet long. Thanks for asking me to measure it because I really should have done so... These were two of the dogwoods there but we just removed one because it was too close to the AC units. I wanted to replace them both with narrow evergreens and maybe add a third one just for privacy. I am hoping for something not super tall just because it's not a huge area.

The AC units are an important consideration as they need airflow. They also eat up a chunk of the 18 feet. How long are the fence panels, from post to post? Now that I see the space, I'm thinking 2 trees in the space shown, one slightly left of the the existing shrub, so mid fence panel and another planted mid fence panel to the right of the shrub. Can you plant a third to the right of the corner post to form a triangle of three?