Screening is a key issue for many garden owners, for both privacy and protection of your garden. Everyone want to be able to use their garden without strangers – or neighbors – watching their every move, and very often to achieve that plants are the best option. Screening is not only visual, and there are several other important reasons to plant screening trees:

  • Visual Screening – evergreen plants provide the only practical solution when screening more than 6 feet tall is needed. A fence does not block second or third-story windows, but fast-growing trees can do that within a few years. As well, green, living screening trees are much more attractive than fences, last decades longer, and are much lower maintenance too.

There is more to screening than just blocking neighboring homes that might look into your garden. You may be near a highway, an industrial zone, rail-tracks, power plants, or other unsightly but essential city features. A tall planting can and will obscure even large structures, turning an unattractive aspect into a calming wall of green. When you come to sell your property, the disappearance of that eye-sore will have increased the value of your property greatly, for just a minimal investment in a few trees.

  • Noise Screening – many homes are built along busy roads or backing onto highways. You may be near a car park, with regular comings and goings, or even in the countryside there can be barns and active farming areas. Industrial parks too can generate noise, both day and night. Noise pollution is a serious problem, but plantings of evergreen trees filter and reduce noise levels more effectively than any other equivalent structure. The dense, irregular structure of a wall of green absorbs noise far more effectively than any hard surface of wood, metal or concrete. Installation is easy, and the cost is just a fraction of any other solution.
  • Air Pollution Screening – dust and atmospheric pollutants are absorbed by plants very effectively. Dirt particles are trapped by the complex layers of foliage, and then later washed into the soil by rainfall. Numerous pollutant gases, from carbon dioxide to methane, or are absorbed by the foliage, incorporated into the structure of the plant, and may remain in the wood for decades, or drop with foliage and be re-cycled into the earth. Nothing does this as effectively or cheaply as plants.
  • Heat Screening – because plants loss water into the atmosphere by evaporation, they cool the air around them. Evaporation absorbs heat from the surroundings, so it is automatically cooling, and much cheaper than air-conditioning. Unlike solid surfaces, which raise the temperature of areas near them by reflecting heat, plants absorb it, so the enclosed area will be cooler than an open space, and much cooler than an area screened with walls and fences.
  • Wind and Snow Screening – the porous structure of screening plants absorbs the energy of wind, rather than just deflecting it, or even amplifying it, as hard surfaces do. That slowing of wind extends many feet on the sheltered side of the plants, so if you live in an open, windy spot, a row of evergreens on the windward side will create a calm haven around your home. As well, that fall in wind-speed means that snow drops to the ground near the screen, instead of drifting towards your house, so you will have less snow built-up on driveways, paths, and around buildings. This means you have less snow to clear, and saves you time and effort in winter

Why Thuja Green Giant for Screening?

Screens all year round

You can get screening from almost any tall plants, but there are several reasons why Thuja Green Giant is the ideal choice. To begin, it is evergreen, so the impact is seen all year round. Deciduous screening may be attractive in summer and even fall, but in winter it is bare, and although the network of branches does still exert some effect on wind, your visual screening is almost completely gone. So evergreens make a lot of sense. Thuja Green Giant forms an evergreen wall of dense foliage, that is an attractive green color all year round. Many other evergreens can turn bronzy in winter, looking less attractive, or they may become scorched in either very cold or very hot conditions, needing care and looking unsightly.

Grows faster than anything else

As well, Thuja Green Giant is the proven fastest growing evergreen screening plant available. There are faster growing deciduous plants, like willow, but among evergreens nothing beats this plant. It can add 3 feet or more in height during its early years, and averages more than a foot a year right up to maturity. A ten-foot screen takes 5 to 7 years to create, depending on the size of the plants you start with.

Grows large enough to screen anything

Mature Thuja Green Giant plants will be 30 feet tall, and that will provide enough height for screening out almost anything. Yet it stays green right to the ground, so that vital eye-level area will always be blocked. This plant retains its dense structure for ever, unlike trees such as spruce or pine, which often become more open with age, and lose lower branches. This means that if you space your plants correctly, you never need to trim to keep your screening dense – which is a huge saving in time and dollars over any time-frame you choose to measure. Plus, if you do prefer a more formal hedge-like look, and a lower height, then this is a very easy plant to trim, responding well by growing denser, looking attractive right after trimming (unlike plants with larger leaves) and capable of being trimmed at most times of the year.

Grows in a wide range of conditions.

From zone 5, with cold, snowy winters, all the way into zone 8 or 9, with little or no winter at all, Thuja Green Giant performs well, without winter damage. It is drought resistant too, and once established needs no supplementary care. It is also virtually pest and disease free, and unlike many other evergreens, deer usually leave it alone as well. It grows in almost any kind of soil, except for ones that are constantly wet, and it tolerates a range of soils from acid to alkaline. Good soil preparation pays dividends in health, density and speed of growth, but even plants put into the ground with minimal preparation thrive and establish themselves well.

Easily obtainable at competitive prices

Because Thuja Green Giant is widely grown, in large numbers on a commercial scale, easy availability of plants in a range of sizes to suit your needs is always there. Prices are competitive too, although avoid ‘bargains’, as these will often be very small, or have open, thin foliage. Buy from a reputable, established company, and look for free shipping, so that you don’t see a big extra charge at the bottom of the bill. With on-line nurseries offering the best prices for top-quality plants, you can have those trees right at your door in a matter of days – just time enough for you to get the holes ready!