I would like to plant a yuletide camellia (sasanqua) beside my patio as a screen to block the neighbor's view from upstairs windows down into my patio, since they recently removed a tree on their yard that performed this function. This variety is supposed to get 10-12' tall. The fence is about 6' so ideally I'd like to get a tree form with the branches rising over the fence.

My local nursery has shrub form plants about 3-4' tall with multiple low branches, and they have a "patio tree" form which is more like a topiary with a long straight trunk and fewer branches all pruned at the top of the plant... and priced about 3x more.

I think it's better to wait until fall to plant it since it's dry and hot here (CA, SF bay area) right now, but the spot gets only about 1-2 hours of intense direct sun per day so it should be a good spot. I have the same variety on the other side of my patio and it's thriving.

My question is - which type/form of plant should I buy to most rapidly achieve the screen I want? At first it would seem the patio tree makes sense but I was concerned that the pruning it received would make it not grow taller. Would I be better off getting the shrubby ones and pruning myself? Or will the patio tree form give me a significant head start?

Thanks