Homeowners often wish for a privacy hedge or screen for a variety of reasons: protecting an outdoor space from the gaze of neighbors, defining property boundaries, serving as a windbreak, hiding an unwanted view, or even deterring trespassers.
Privacy hedges not only fulfill practical needs but also add aesthetic appeal to the landscape and provide cover and shelter for wildlife as well.
There are certain attributes for a desirable privacy hedge: fast-growing, a dense habit, and easily spreading.
Unfortunately, this leads many to choose (or neglect to remove) harmful invasive shrubs like varieties of bush honeysuckle including Amur honeysuckle (lonicera maacki) and Japanese honeysuckle (lonicera japonica) which are rampant in many areas of the US.
There are several native shrubs in the US that can provide a privacy screen and form a thicket without being invasive like honeysuckle.
And going native is a great way to add environmental and ecosystem benefits at the same time.
In general, when thinking of privacy plenty of people jump straight to evergreens, and there are certainly native evergreens that could fill this role. But many dense, thicket-forming deciduous shrubs can still be a great choice for privacy due to their abundant small branchlets which obscure a view even without leaves.
Here are a few examples that include a few different regions of the United States:
Eastern Red Cedar (Juniperus virginiana)
Native to eastern North America, from Maine to Florida and west to Texas and Minnesota. It is an evergreen conifer that grows up to 50 feet tall and can form a dense thicket. It prefers full sun and well-drained soil.
Common Witch Hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) – Native to eastern North America, from Nova Scotia to Georgia and west to Minnesota and Texas. It is a deciduous shrub that grows up to 20 feet tall and can form a dense thicket. It prefers partial shade and moist, well-drained soil.
Pacific Wax Myrtle (Myrica californica) – Native to the west coast of North America, from British Columbia to Baja California. It is an evergreen shrub that grows up to 30 feet tall and can form a dense thicket. It prefers full sun to partial shade and well-drained soil.
American Beautyberry (Callicarpa americana) – Native to the southeastern US, from Maryland to Texas and north to Missouri and Oklahoma. It is a deciduous shrub that grows up to 6 feet tall and can form a dense thicket. It prefers partial shade and moist, well-drained soil.
American Plum (Prunus Americana)
Commonly found from Texas and Nebraska in the west to New England in the east, and from Minnesota in the north to Florida in the south. Its dense growth and thicket-forming habit make it a great choice for a privacy screen, and it’s also one of the best choices for wildlife while also providing food for humans. What more could you ask for? It can reach a height of 15-25 feet (if not pruned) and forms a spreading, multi-stemmed thicket, providing an effective visual barrier. The branches are covered with dark green, serrated leaves and produces beautiful white flowers in early spring, attracting bees and other pollinators. These flowers are followed by red to yellow plums, which ripen in late summer or early fall. It serves as a host plant for the larvae of several butterfly species, including the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail and the Red-spotted Purple.
Any of these shrubs are great alternatives to invasive honeysuckle for creating a privacy screen, and there are plenty of other options you could choose from as well.
If you’re interested in a more “formal” hedge, check out our article on shrubs to replace boxwoods, which recommends a variety of native holly, as well as a couple other ideas.
As with many situations in the garden, if we rethink our assumptions about what is “best” to use and consider natives in our list of options, we can do a lot of good towards reversing pollinator declines and restoring our damaged and fragmented ecosystems.
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