Oh wow, yea that is a shocking difference! But on the bright side you have a sunnier area to now with and you can grow more things. Cars on the road couldn't care less if you're out there, they're watching (or should be...) the road. It's the neighbors and pedestrian passer-by I'd feel more exposed to.

Wow! Love photo #1 and #2. It was really a nice planting! You will adjust. It just takes time. And you have always said you have so many trees you didn't have enough sun for things you want to grow, now's your chance!

I garden in the front of the house and I can't even count how many people in my neighborhood that I've gotten to know from gardening out there.

Oh, trust me lol - I have absolutely no problem at all talking to anyone who walks by! I have gardens in my front yard and while working there I talk to anyone who walks down the street, sometimes for quite a while. I've even facilitated plant swaps with folks I've never met - we get talking gardens and then we leave plants out in front for each other. I'm definitely not an introvert or someone who has trouble making conversation. As a matter of fact if someone walks by and doesn't say anything, I call out a "good morning" or other greeting to them. I think it's weird that one human would walk by another and not acknowledge them.

But not only have I been used to having, in that side area, that privacy for 30 years, but this part of the yard is like a back yard - it's a retreat where my family and I can sit, read, talk, or garden in peace and privacy. Plus - and I know this will pass - but for now, it's so weird to be out there and feel like I'm right in view of my neighbors. I know they don't care what I'm doing lol, but it's a strange feeling. (Plus their darn dog can see me now so I foresee a lot more barking!) So I am definitely going to try as quickly as possible to get some shrubs in there.

I am torn about the new sunny area. On one hand, yes, I am glad my raised beds will now get more sun, like they did when I first started those gardens. But I am kind of sad about losing the shade a bit farther over. Lol, I call myself a vampire gardener. I hate working in the sun and always work in the shade. Today I kept going outside to work in that area, thinking the shade would be there - and it wasn't! So that will take some getting used to. And so now I have yet another shade bed that is no longer shady, and wherein I might have to move stuff. I already have burned hostas and such in the bed where I lost a big oak. Also, my whole sense of space and proportion are out of whack out there now. It just *feels* odd, literally physically odd. That will take some getting used to as well.

Spent some time this evening looking into some shrubs. I have to adjust what I was going to plant from part shade shrubs to full sun shrubs! Please feel free to give any suggestions!

:)

Dee

P.S. Rosa I laughed out loud at your suggestion to wear bad hats and mutter!

What about one or two large, dense shrubs, perhaps one of them evergreen? I'm thinking of something like Magnolia stellata and/or Viburnum pragense or V. plicatum tomentosum or .... I'm sure there are conifers that would work too, but I don't know conifers well.

And something fast growing....lol. Consider a Gray Dogwood. It's native, it provides fruit for the birds and it performed in the most difficult corner of my property that three previous attempts to plant there had failed to thrive. And it's FAST! It's pretty in flower, but quietly so. The one drawback is it suckers if that is something you wouldn't want. I had the room to let it expand and I kept it from moving into the lawn by putting hydrangeas between it and the lawn. And the suckers are easy to pull out in their first season.

By the way Dee, since we all have limited space and time to garden, for me, I try to use every opportunity to find a place to grow what I LOVE. You must have lots of shrubs, trees, perennials, veggies that you LOVE - now's your chance, just find a place for them and enjoy them.

LOL PM2, that's kind of the problem - there are too many things I want! And you know me and decisions lol. The only thing good about this situation is that the new exposure will MAKE me make a decision quickly!

I forgot to add that in addition to keeping the plant height in mind (after all this whole thing is because of the wires overhead lol!) anything I plant here has to be on the narrow side. It's literally dangerous pulling out of my driveway. I am in a blind curve - my property comes out farther than my neighbor's. We literally inch out of our driveway (which is right BEFORE the mailbox in the photo above) and even then I have inched out only to find a garbage truck or UPS truck in front of my neighbor's driveway! And I couldn't see it! And you can see how close their driveway is to my mine, but the big trucks are completely obscured! The curve is way worse than it appears in the photo.

It's bad enough there's that curve but then they stuck that telephone pole right there, which further limits the view, my neighbor's wall in the photo above is smack in my line of sight, and I'm constantly out there trimming their euonymus shrub back, and whacking back sassafras and bittersweet and grapevine so I can see. And people drive way too fast on my road - sometimes up to 50 miles an hour.

So I need to plant anything there far enough back from the road, and into the yard, to not further obstruct the limited view. But I want to balance that with not taking away too much space on the inside of the shrub row, in the yard. So I'm hoping for things that stay relatively narrow, no more than 4 or 5 feet wide.

laceyvail therefore those viburnums you mentioned would be too big for me, but I am looking into some smaller varieties. I'll have to look into conifers too. There's a whole world of shrubs and trees that I know nothing about!

Of course, I could just wait another year and that sassafras that's left in the photo will be 7 feet high next year lol. Ah well, I resigned myself to the fact years ago that I will always be pulling sassafras from all over my yard. I really have nothing against sassafras per se. It's quite a lovely tree actually. But they grow too big for this spot and there are just too many of them! Maybe I should go into the root beer business, or the supplement business lol....

:)

Dee

I am enjoying this thread....love the detail. Keep the posts coming.

rouge is that just a nice way of saying I'm long-winded and talk too much lol? I'm not offended if it is lol - I kinda am and kinda do!

I have to say that now that the trees are gone, and I'm s-l-o-w-l-y getting used to the exposure, the reality of the clean-up I have to do is hitting me. I have to get rid of the sassafras, the weeds, the bittersweet and grapevine, and then I have to rake out(??) all the years of tree debris there - leaves, sticks, all the debris my lazy butt threw in there lol. I have to cut back the euonymus (again) so I can get out of my driveway. I'm probably going to have to try to level the ground a bit and of course there will be rocks to dig.

Just have to keep my eyes on the end result - a nice shrub border! I hope....

:)

Dee

One step at a time.I do the opposite, Dee...avoiding even a whiff of an end result. Whatever strategy works for you. Although I have to say...I like a list.

rouge is that just a nice way of saying I'm long-winded and talk too much lol?

Never! As I said, I am enjoying this ever growing thread. Keep those posts comin'.

I hate when something like this happens. You have my sympathies for loss of your privacy. That area was very nice before. Yes you will eventually get used to it or re-plant but I understand completely (as one who has gone through this a couple of times) your disappointment. Try to take a breath and relax. Talking to others helps.

I think it would be easier to control the height and width if you put in some kind of trellis/open fence with clematis or roses or something else growing on it. If you google "trellis fence ideas" and scroll through some images, there are some beautiful alternatives. An open fence section would give you some partial privacy even before your plants are established.

I'm wondering if you could request to have the speed limit lowered around that curve. It does look dangerous, if not for you, then for anyone visiting you that's not used to it.

I also understand the loss of a big tree…..however mine was what shaded my backyard. I lost almost all of my shade. But, I must say I did take delight in finding and planting plants for sun. I have been a big hosta collector, but now I was looking for sun tolerant ones and then adding many different perennials for color and texture. I think my area may be smaller than yours, but I went go-ho re-planting the first 2 years. Things really are filling in nicely now. So I didn’t have so much loss of privacy from neighbors walking by, but our view upwards is completely open, when for many years we never saw the wires and tops of houses across the alley, now we do. And if they are on their 2nd story, they can see into our yard. Well, we live in the city and there’s nothing we could do about it, the tree was dying. Have fun with your ideas and redesign! If something doesn’t work out, you know you can always move it or plant something different.

Have you considered some nice big ornamental grasses for some privacy? There are some many that get tall and add texture to your yard, providing some privacy with a softness to a barrier.

debra

Thanks schoolhouse!

Christie the problem with fencing (other than the expense lol) is that this area is very very rocky. In one of the photos in my original post, you can see the edge of my cinderblock raised beds (which need some attention lol). I put these in over 20 years ago because that area is solid rock ledge - and of course it was the sunniest spot in my yard! The area where the trees were cut down, about 20 feet away, is not actually solid rock, (well, that I can tell, lol) but basically a big rock pile with a handful of dirt thrown on it lol. Okay, I may be slightly exaggerating but not by much! Actually, in cleaning up the last few days, I'm beginning to wonder if perhaps there wasn't a stone wall there at one point. My area was all farms about a hundred years ago, (heck, 40 years ago!) and is still a quite rural suburb, and there are many, many stone walls along the road. I may dig a bit deeper and see what I find and perhaps make a very low wall there.

Debra it's so rough losing a tree! I actually fell in love with this property as soon as we pulled in the driveway, before even seeing the house. It's very shady and so many trees - about 50 at the time, on just under an acre. We have lost about ten in the last few decades, including a lovely triple-trunk oak that I still miss 6 years later - I kept the stump at about 6-7 feet high, as my main garden was around it. I have so many shade plants there and in this newly-deforested area that may have to move.

I'm not a huge fan of grasses, at least not the big ones. And we have to be very careful about blocking the sightlines from the driveway. Therefore I'm trying to keep things a bit more on the narrow side, because I don't want to plant TOO far into the yard, but need to keep things a good ten feet from the street.

Christie I don't think asking to lower the speed limit will help. It's already only 25 mph, but people do at the very least 40, and sometimes 50 and more, it seems. And yes! You are exactly right about people who are not used to it! There is a street that comes out to my street, one house over, in front of my neighbors behind the euonymus shrubs, and often people miss the turn. My driveway is one of the first two past that street, (the other being almost directly across from mine). People have missed the turn, turned into my driveway to turn around, backed out, and gotten hit! And we tell EVERYONE - from visiting friends and relatives to delivery drivers - to turn around on our front lawn and PULL out, not back out. It's just too risky.

Here is my progress so far. It's actually not quite as bad as I thought it would be to clean up, just very tedious. Lots of cutting back wild (rasp??)berry vines, and bittersweet, and grapevine, and a small bit of poison ivy, and lots of cutting down the dreaded sassafras seedlings. And oh my goodness, soooooo many sticks and branches! To the right of that boulder in the middle is the trunk of the cedar they cut down (sure hope they come back and get it!) with some long branches which I piled on top of it, most about six feet long.

Another angle, looking toward the street. There is the cedar trunk, with the branches, and in the foreground is another pile of sticks and some sassafras seedlings that didn't fit in the wheel barrow. (and you can see just a bit of that solid ledge - the dark gray rock in front of the stick pile. There's another raised bed just to the right of that rock.)

I'm actually trying to NOT clean up TOO well, as there are lots of leaves, and needles from the cedar, and other natural debris that I just want to leave to breakdown in place. I've only had a few hours total to get out there, but I'm hoping to maybe finish the clean up soon, then poke around in those rocks to see what's there, and also hopefully start planting.

I posted to another thread about grasses the other day and suddenly remembered that I had planted broom corn one year to use in my bouquets for sale. I remembered that it grew a good 10-12 feet high, and so I thought that might be an option for next season while I wait for my shrubs to grow. Not that I need 12 feet lol - I'm happy with 6 - but it's a cool plant and easy from seed so why not? We'll see. I'm sure I'll change my mind a hundred times by next spring! Heck, by next week lol!

:)

Dee

Oh my gosh Dee, what a change! Sounds like youre taking it in stride though, and sometimes change is good? At least it wasn’t completely unexpected.

I would worry about all the weeds just waiting to sprout and resprout now that theres more sun. Any chance someone can dump a load of wood chips in the meantime? Otherwise my only though was sunflowers until you can make some other more permanent decisions. You can never go wrong with sunflowers lol

Greats mind, kato! I too am thinking of the weed paradise I am creating and was wondering if I could ask the tree guys to dump some wood chips out there. There are certainly plenty of them to be had around here lol. I did see down the street someone else who is now naked and exposed has a huge pile or two and he has raked them out over some of the bare area. I just don't know if I can get it cleaned up out there in time. Of course they started doing this in March and just now have gotten to my part of the road, and are close to finishing. Maybe I can get out there tomorrow (my day off) and clear enough area right next to the road to hold some chips. Although I'm thinking a concrete slab won't stop the sassafras, lol, but as I said I am resigned to spending the rest of my gardening days dealing with that!

Also, I did think of sunflowers! Funny, I love sunflowers, but once I stopped growing for market I stopped growing them. One of the gardening curses I am saddled with is that my sunniest area is along my boundary line and the front of the street, which is south, southwest, and west facing. I realized early on that many things I grow, I don't get to enjoy nearly as much as my neighbor or the passing traffic lol! The blooms mostly face away from me, and sunflowers are the worst transgressors lol. I do still grow some smaller branching varieties along the street (although this year tried tithonia instead) but I did indeed consider some taller sunflowers to grow out there next season. The neighborhood will enjoy the blooms more than I do, but they will afford some privacy.

I think I am going to start a separate thread to discuss some plant choices. I'm not used to gardening in so much sun lol, so I think I will solicit some ideas!

:)

Dee