Potential Hedge Help

[nsmith07]

Hello,

My name is Nathan, I live in zone 6 northeast Ohio with Ph 6-7 soil. We have snowy winters and hot humid summers. I live on a 1/4 acre lot with great southern exposure in my small backyard. My wife and I are feeling the fishbowl effect of suburbia and I am starting to plan out a permaculture foodforest in my little yard.

I want to plant a hedge around my back and side yards, probably about 150 feet of total distance. The main issue is that there is a steep 4 foot incline near my property line that makes it hard to plant anything that gets too wide without intruding into neighbors yard. I am looking for an edible, or at least wildlife useful hedge that can be maintained within a 2-3 foot area and about 5-7 feet. I have a few ideas and would love any feedback. Here are my ideas so far.

Ideas
Using different combinations of the following to create an alternating patterned hedge:
-Shrubs- aronia, goumi, highbush cranberry seem most likely. Blueberries would need soil acidification as my pH is about 6-6.5 at best, but I don't know how much upkeep that takes.
- Fruit trees- pruned into fan shape. Persimmons and Jujubes
- Perennial sunflowers like maximillians pinched or headed off early to reduce height and increase stalk strength.
- Hardy Clumping Bamboo Like fargesias. I have never used these and do not know how to prune. They would also get a lot of hot summer sun.

Obstacles to overcome
- HOA restrictions on wire trellises (as well as the cost of it).
- narrow planting area of about 2 feet at top of incline.
- Woody perennials preferred for winter screening

Any suggestions or novel ideas? Would love any help.

Nathan

I will attach a sketch of my yard soon. Thanks!

[nsmith07]

This is my first picture post, hope it works. I have a corner lot with a treelawn and sidewalk on the north and west sides. The dotted line represents the general area where the incline in my yard levels out. It is steepest (can barely push mower up it) at the Southeast corner and a very gentle grade on the Southwest corner. This is the main issue that leaves me only about 2 feet of usable width to plant. I don't want to plant the hedge at the base because I still would have to maintain yard or something behind it as well as the fact that the base of the steep incline is very very wet for 3 seasons of the year.

Each grid square is 3 feet.
[img]https://i1119.photobucket.com/albums/k624/nssmith07/CurrentYardSketch1.jpg[/img]

[nsmith07]

Thanks for the comments,

I never did consider euonymous, but that sounds about what I need! Do you by change know if goumi, aronia, and highbush cranberry can be pruned/trained into a thinner shape and still do ok?

I am also posting a picture of my plans for the interior of the yard in the permaculture section a bit later today, I would appreciate any help you could give with that too.

Thanks again!

Nathan

[bullthistle]

This might give you some ideas however there is not much a 1/4 acre will allow you to accomplish.

https://www.motherearthnews.com/modern-homesteading/living-fences-z10m0sto.aspx?page=5

[applestar]

I have to rush off now, but I'm going to leave you with a link to [url=https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=24892]my edible landscaping thread[/url]. We have 3/8 acre total in a cookie cutter subdivision.

I have some concerns about planting edibles bordering neighbors, and at the bottom of an incline where all the runoff ( from neighbors chemical lawn treatments) would pool. But we'll talk about that later.

[nsmith07]

Hey trust me, no parade here haha, I know that those shrubs get bigger and wider than I would want, but I wanted to know if anyone had experience pruning them to be smaller or thinner and to see how well the plants take it.

Forsythia gets big, but many people prune that into a more hedgelike shape, so I wanted to see if some of the more well known edible landscaping plants could handle the same treatment. Thanks for the info though, I have thought about giving up on the shrub hedge idea. free standing blackberries might work, but they are not very tall and can still lean over quite a bit. I just don't want to plant a sterile columnar juniper that doesn't fruit and could harm other people's apple trees.