Hi everyone,

I am looking to grow some evergreen behind/under some white pine trees. The picture captures a portion of the white pines (next to a hemlock) where I am looking to grow some addtional evergreens against the fence for some noise barrier screening. Basically, because the white pines have lost most of its lower limbs and there is gap both beneath the fence to ground, as well as above the fence to pine branch screening, there is a lot of road noise that comes through. I understand that plants will not be able to block out a lot more noise, but was wondering if it would be possible to plant some shade-tolerant evergreen behind the pine to fill in the gap? We've had two landscaper take a look, and one recommended thuja green giant/hollies behind / in between the pines, and the other said that any tree we plant there will be crowded out by the existing pine and not survive (both because of the size/extent of the shade from the pine), as well as because there is a small ditch along the fence (which i don't recall getting overflown with water usually), but the white pine is planted on the side of the ditch that is farther from the fence, and the landscaper said it would be hard to grow anything in the ditch or on the slope from the fence leading down to the ditch. He recommended planting non-invasive clumping bamboo (or invasive running bamboo with a root barrier).

I wanted to get folks advice on whether any evergreen tree/shrub/screening plant that is shade tolerant could survive /grow behind these trees (as small trees to start) or is bamboo the only option? I have four western hemlock seedings (2 year old that I was thinking about trying in this area too since they're supposed to be really shade tolerant).

Thanks!

Am