Native Hedgerows Offer Privacy and Habitat

Fences – especially living ones – make good neighbors. Everyone should be able to walk outside with their morning coffee in their underwear and enjoy privacy. Window shades should only have to be pulled down to block the sun or cold, but not to keep passersby from looking in. If you have privacy issues from near neighbors or streets, traffic noise, dust from a neighbor’s backyard, or desperately need shade but don’t want a wide tree, then here are some great drought-tolerant and hassle-free solutions.

For shorter hedges 3 - 8 feet, look to coyote brush or San Diego Viguiera Bahiopsis (Viguiera) laciniata. Coyote Brush  needs no water once established, has a free form rounded shape and small light green leaves. Best of all in late winter and early spring it is covered with white blooms to provide food for pollinators during times of dearth. It can be lightly pruned for shaping. San Diego Viguiera also responds very well to pruning and will add color with its prolific, small yellow flowers. Also many manzanitas will grow into a stunning hedge, with dark red bark and pale pink bell-shaped flowers. Silk tassel bush can be shaped into a solid green hedge, but enjoy the blooms that look like dangly earrings. Coffeeberry is a handsome shrub that can take some shade and although the berries aren’t a coffee substitute, the birds adore them. If you like the smell of citrus in bloom, then plant a row of mock orange. Its white flowers even resemble orange blossoms.

If you need a moderately fast growing hedge from 15 to 25 feet high you can’t do better than sugarbush or it’s near relative lemonadeberry. These shiny-leaved full-bodied handsome shrubs can take our hot summers and low water without blinking.  A slower-growing shrub of the same dimensions is Catalina cherry. The fruit is mostly pit and little flesh, but are still fun to eat. Want something to give your yard a more evergreen forest look? Try the grey-green, fast-growing and hardy Tecate cypress. They make a great replacement for the temperamental Italian cypress. Tecate cypress combines fast growth with impressive drought tolerance; a combination that is hard to find!

Any of these plants can be used unpruned for a natural look, or pruned and shaped to suit more formal designs. Either way, when you plant a native hedge you are providing the best possible food and shelter for songbirds and pollinators. So give yourself some privacy by planting a hedge of low-water-use native plants, and only birds will be watching you drink that morning coffee.