GreenGiant117
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Noise Blocking in the shade

Hello all,

I am looking to plant some shrubs or trees along the back side of my property in order to block the highway noise, since the back side of my property butts up to a highway.
My first thought was arborvitaes since they are very common, fairly cheap (when purchased small) and pretty forgiving for those without a perfectly green thumb. But since I have a little bit of woods back there, and it is only open to the sky on the northern side, they would never get a decent amount of sun, which I am pretty sure that arborvitaes want full or near full sun to really flourish.

Try as I might I cannot find really anything online for noise dampening plants that don't require lots of sun, almost everywhere suggest something in the pine/conifer range of plants all of which are happiest with a lot of sunlight.

Any suggestions on what to look out for or plants to consider for this application?

I want to plant them along an approximately 125-150 ft wide area and I can make it from 10-25 ft in depth so I have quite a bit of room to work with. Obviously cheaper is better, to a point, I don't mind spending a little extra if I get a lot more effective dampening out of it. I just really want to avoid dealing with clearing the woods AND planting noise dampening plants at the same time, the plan is to eventually thin out/clear a majority of the woods, but that is a few years away.

Thanks in advance!

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rainbowgardener
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Where are you located? Trees that would work in Texas are different from those that would work in Michigan are different from trees in Australia or the Phillipines (we do have people that write in here from all over the world.)

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applestar
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Yes, and for that amount of space, I think it’s imperative to plan and design a well-balanced polyculture rather than adding a mass of single species. What are the pre-existing trees? It would be best to work them into a mutually supportive plant community.

Why do you want remove the existing trees? What happens after clearing out the existing trees?

GreenGiant117
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rainbowgardener:

I knew I was forgetting to add some information... I am in Central Massachusetts Long/Lat of 42,-72 (approx)

applestar:

I definitely want to make it most happy for the long term so a good mix would be good.
The current trees are a mix of birch, ash, maple, oak, and a few different coniferous species I am not knowledgeable enough to identify.

I want to remove the existing because for the most part they are not healthy, most of the birch trees are leaning fairly drastically, a lot of the coniferous ones are dead or dying, all of the foliage is also super high up. I'm fairly certain that for the most part it is just not healthy, the previous owner of the property seemed to not do anything with this section of the land, so there is ton of rotting wood in that area from fallen trees. So right now there are some larger healthy seeming trees 50-100' tall (mostly hardwoods), then some smaller trees 5-25' which mostly are struggling to survive or dead, and then some grass like undergrowth along with some moss and limited ferns.

The plan at this point is to clear it out, leaving some of the larger, healthier trees, along with some of the healthier saplings for future growth. Then try to clear out as much rotting stuff that I can and hopefully expand the yard a little bit by putting down some grass around the trees.

I'm not an expert, but I think it's just too densely populated with too much old growth so it never gets much light down low to promote more growth.

I have attached a quickly done not to scale drawing of an overhead view of my house along with approximate distances.
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Overview.PNG

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rainbowgardener
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Looks like you are in zone 5b or 6a...

Conifers: eastern white pine, canadian hemlock

native deciduous trees: American smoketree, redbud, red maple, dogwood, carolina silverbell, sweetbay magnolia,

It helps to fill in, especially while the trees are young, to mix in some shrubbery. If you plant things with nectar flowers and edible berries, it will be a haven for wildlife: sweet shrub, summer sweet, hazelnut, winter hazel, rhododendrons, snowberry, coral berry, viburnums

Make a mixture of these and it will be beautiful, help provide habitat value, shade, noise protection. All of these are native and reasonably shade tolerant.

I would find a good native plant nursery near you and talk to them about your situation. They will be glad to advise you about plants that will work best with your situation and probably give you a discount for buying a lot of trees and shrubs at once.

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applestar
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Sounds like a worthy project! This will probably be a good guideline for you —

Mass.Gov (.gov) › 2016/08PDF
Red Oak - Sugar Maple Transition Forest - Mass.gov
Classification of Natural Communities of Massachusetts, Version 2.0.

https://www.mass.gov/files/documents/20 ... forest.pdf

...if what you have are not red oak and sugar maple, then there should be other appropriate plant communities with the healthy trees as the dominant/anchor species, but the above will give you an idea.
...it would help to determine if what you have is transitioning INTO or OUT OF the oak-maple plant community


...also, the following posts are from a very old thread about edible food forests so not exactly the same, opabinia51 has not been active in a very long time, plus was gardening in the Pacific Northwest/British Columbia I think? So the plant lists are not quite relevant to you.... But the basic descriptions of the plant guilds/plant community hows and whys, and the listed plants would be worthwhile reference.

Subject: Permaculture - Food Forests
opabinia51 wrote:Guilds are great for ecological gardening but, when building a food forest guilds are good but, given the size of most persons properties, a truly guilded forest would take up to much space and light restrictions would create next to no light beneath the mature canopy.

Therefore, the same ideas can hold true but, instead of dense plantings, the food forest is designed in layers. The first layer is the Tall tree layer, located at the back of the property in what is called zone 3. Zone thee requires the least amount of maintenance and be basically left to grow on it's own, peraps being mowed a couple of times a year. The tall trees should be underplanted with a ground cover to help build the soil. A good mix is Annuel Rye, Clover (nitrogen fixing), yarrow, dill and fennel. Perhaps a few scatterings of daikon to break up any hard packed soil. This mix will enrich the soil with nitrogen, and provide a healthy mulch when mowed and attract beneficial insects.
Acacia
American Chestnut
Apple
Asian Pear
Black Locust
Black Walnut
Buartnut
Bur Oak
Butternut
Cherry
Cinese Chjestnut
European Pear
Heartnut
Hickory
Honey Locust
Mesquite
peach
Pecan
Plum
Walnut

The second layer is the Low Tree Layer this consists of of many of the same trees as in the the tall tree layer but, in dwarf and semi dwarf form.
One small note: the trees can still be planted in guilds in both these layers but, the garden (forest) is not guild centered. It is meant to function as a mega guild where each part nuritious the other.
Almond
Apple (dwarf or semi dwarf)
Apricot
Bamboo
Crabapple
Cornelian Cherry Dogwood
Fig
Filbert/hazelnut
Golden Chain Tree (Nitrogen Fixer)
Hawthorn
Jujube
Loquat
Mayhaw
Medlar
Mountain Ash
Mulberry
Pawpaw
Peach (dwarf or semi dwarf)
Pecan
Persimmon
Pomegranate
Subject: Permaculture - Food Forests
opabinia51 wrote:Next is the shrub layer. This layer consists of flowering, fruiting, wildlife attracting and other useful shrubs.

American Cranberry
Aronia (Chokeberry)
Autumn Olive
Blackberry
Blueberry
Buffaloberry
Currant (grows well in a walnut guild)
Elderberry
False Indigo
Gooseberry
Goumi (Nitrogen Fixer)
Hackberry (Allelopath(inhibits grasses), grows well in a walnut grove)
Hansen's Bush Cherry
Highbush Cranberry
Indigo
Japanese Barberry
Jostaberry
Nanking Cherry
Pinapple Guava
Raspberry
Red Azarole
Rugose Rose
Russian Olive
Sea Buckthorn
Sericeberry (Saskatoon berry)
Siberian Pea Shrub
Summersweet Clethra
Witch Hazel

All of these shrubs except indigo, guaca and the buckthorn have wildlife value, in that they attract wildlife. All are edible except Buffaloberry, False Indigo, Hackberry, Indigo, Japanese Barbery, clethra and the Hazel.

The bold faced plants are nitrogen fixers.

GreenGiant117
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Thanks for the advice! I have been to a local nursery, but originally under the pretext of getting a bunch of arborvitaes, before I realized the shade issue and before I dug in depth into the current contents of the area.

I guess the next questions would be:
What order should I attack this; clear existing stuff and turn the soil then plant, do it in sections, or plant then clear around it?
When would be the best time to do the planting? (I'm assuming spring, so start clearing and cleaning now, then plant next spring?)

Thanks again!

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applestar
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We posted nearly at the same time — did you see mine?

I’ve never been involved in large scale wooded stuff like this — rainbowgardener May have more insights from her experiences from her volunteer activities. But gut instinct — clear out obvious materials first or the new plants and plantings/ prepped grounds would be trampled/buried/crushed in the clearing out process.

...you may want to shoot tomf and maybe !potatoes! a PM and see if they are available to join this discussion (or I can do that for you)

GreenGiant117
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Hi applestar, that is fantastic information!

The majority of the larger trees that are healthy are red/white oaks and maples (not sure if they are sugar maples or norway/silver) so hopefully that's good information.

I guess the plan will be for now to start the clearing/cleaning/prepping process and work with a local nursery to see if I can get a rundown of some good plants (will definitely look into the list above... well some anyways, I do not want to start a bamboo forest in my backyard) and plan for that most likely in the early fall, or next spring.

I will reach out to them and see if they have any insight.

Thanks!!

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tomf
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At my house I lived in in Portland Or, I planted laurels. They grow fast and are thick can take some shade and stay green all winter so the sound deadening is there in the winter. I would think they would do fine in Mass.

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applestar
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Great! You’re here @tomf :D

Oh, and I agree with rainbowgardener about leaning towards native plants. That’s one of the issues I have with the Permaculture plant lists because they lean heavily on food value and functionality with less regard for native status and what that would mean to the local ecology and biosphere/predator-prey ladder. You don’t want to go and spend money planting invasive species of no environmental value that may even cause harm.

GreenGiant117
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applestar wrote:Great! You’re here @tomf :D

Oh, and I agree with rainbowgardener about leaning towards native plants. That’s one of the issues I have with the Permaculture plant lists because they lean heavily on food value and functionality with less regard for native status and what that would mean to the local ecology and biosphere/predator-prey ladder. You don’t want to go and spend money planting invasive species of no environmental value that may even cause harm.

I agree completely with you on that, my wife and I have been battling a Bittersweet invasion since we moved in, which is a losing battle since most of MA is overrun with the stuff

GreenGiant117
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tomf wrote:At my house I lived in in Portland Or, I planted laurels. They grow fast and are thick can take some shade and stay green all winter so the sound deadening is there in the winter. I would think they would do fine in Mass.

Thanks for looking at the post!
There is at least one species of Laurel native to the northeast so they will definitely be in the mix.

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tomf
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There are a few laurels that are invasive, make sure you do not get English, Spurge, or Cherry. They will not produce food but what you are looking for is to block the noise, and in the winter many trees loose their leafs so the noise reduction goes down, but Laurels are evergreens. Of course there may be other plants as well. The issue with arborvitaes is snow can damage and bend them.

GreenGiant117
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tomf wrote:There are a few laurels that are invasive, make sure you do not get English, Spurge, or Cherry. They will not produce food but what you are looking for is to block the noise, and in the winter many trees loose their leafs so the noise reduction goes down, but Laurels are evergreens. Of course there may be other plants as well. The issue with arborvitaes is snow can damage and bend them.
Definitely, looking around it seems like the Mountain Laurel is native to this area, and that's about it. Though they only get to 4-10ft tall so I may have to either build a berm or find something else for higher up.
Arbs also want lots of sun, which is not really an option in the area I'm going to plant.

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!potatoes!
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I'm afraid I don't have any big ideas to add. the shade thing is a real issue. rhododendron/laurel is a good idea. if you're up for building berms anyway...go as far as you can with them! soil will give you the best shady noise-blocking yo can get!

GreenGiant117
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!potatoes! wrote:I'm afraid I don't have any big ideas to add. the shade thing is a real issue. rhododendron/laurel is a good idea. if you're up for building berms anyway...go as far as you can with them! soil will give you the best shady noise-blocking yo can get!
Once I noticed that the laurels and rhododendrons only get to ~10ft tall I was considering the idea of building a berm, not sure if I have any restrictions with that though, since I would want to build it up to the fence between my property and the highway.



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