I currently have a 12 metre long rear fence at my house which has 2 double story houses which have windows that give views straight into our north facing backyard. I have worked out that I would need about a 4 metre high screen to block their windows.
Firstly i'll say that I would like to try to keep the yard looking somewhat tropical, with cycas, agaves, yucca's etc.
I had previously decided that bamboo would be the way to go, I looked up appropriate options and liked the look of the gracilis bamboo. I went down to the bamboo nursery but couldn't go through with it. When I looked around I saw bamboo that had been grown for several years and it was almost intimidating seeing how many shoots had come up from the ground and how large the thing got. I couldn't help but think 12 metres of that would be just too much to handle.
I then went down the street and saw Waterhousia floribunda (weeping lilly pilly) in pots. It looked quite nice with the light green new foliage and weeping leaves. The lady at the nursery said they make great screens and can easily be maintained to 4 metres in height as a hedge. I went home and tried to find out as much as I could about these plants. One concerning thing I saw is that they can grow into huge trees and also I couldn't find many pictures of these being hedged into a medium sized hedge.
I would like to hear from people who have experience with these plants or if there are any other options that I should consider. My yard will only be about 6 metres deep once our extensions are done so I if either of these options are going to be too hard to keep to an acceptable size, it would be good to know now rather than later.
A couple of other questions I have are:
With the gracilis, would using a root barrier to confine the clump to a width of say 50-60cm make the bamboo more manageable in terms the clump growing to 1 metre by 50cm rather than 1 metre by 1 metre.
With the waterhousia, has anyone hedged these? do you have some photos and are they easy to prune and keep to 4 metres?
As mentioned, I am open to other suggestions also. I did have a look at alphonse karr bamboo which grows to a height closer to what I actually want but the thing that concerned me with them is that they don't seem to grow very straight and may end up hanging over the neighbours yards and looked a little messy.
Thanks in advance to anyone who can give me some guidance.
Michael