if you are patient, evergreen huckleberry, Vaccinium ovatum, will do the shade thing for you.

pineapple guava for sun. Feijoa sellowiana.

The huckleberry is a great suggestion, there's also blueberries (Vaccinum spp), some of which are semi-evergreen and hold onto a few of their leaves, but both them and the deciduous varieties will have fantastic fall foliage.

A nice 'leaf-use' plant would be Camellia sinensis ... you'll have your own tea leaves!

Such shrubs are brittle and will be broken down, trampled out unless the interlopers are unusually considerate. Dogs will pay no attention and may continue to travel through holes or gaps in the planting maintained by their passage.

Although it would seem a natural for the characteristics asked for evergreen huckleberry, like other heath family plants must have specific soil conditions to make an attractive and persisting planting. Its presence in local vegetation consistently indicates a site with sandy or otherwise more coarse and aerated than usual soil. There is a specific salal-huckleberry-madrona association that dominates districts and sites with sandy soil near salt water here, some of the south part of Vashon Island for instance. It seems to want to local version of monsoonal mountainsides in the Sino-Himalaya, that is good drainage with frequent atmospheric moisture events. It appears to absolutely thrive behind outer coastal beaches, in all that sand, fog and rain, producing spectacularly colored new growth and other attributes not seen farther inland.

Plantings of it on heavier soils and sunnier, drier sites in the Puget Trough are often bad-looking, with stunted growth, twig dieback and poor, spotty foliage.

If you have the right dirt and aspect, can protect it from errant feet it could be excellent.

Hardier forms of the tea plant are hardy most winters here but can be singed in the worst times, such as December 1990. These are said not to taste as good as the tender forms grown in warm temperate/subtropical places. And if you keep pinching out the new growth to make tea the desired hedge effect will be slower to occur, unless you wait perhaps decades before starting to harvest much.

Pineapple guava will be burnt, even defoliated more often on all but the mildest sites, this should usually be regarded as a tender wall shrub in this region. I think I have seen a minimum temperature of 15 degrees F. suggested somewhere for this plant.

Something else might present itself on the website or in the catalog of an edible plant specialist such as Raintree nursery, Burnt Ridge nursery or One Green World.

Chilean myrtle is a good one, with the right shape and vigor for a hedge. Not ironclad hardy, but if your site seldom sees single digits you may not see much damage. I know of persisting, large specimens in Seattle - and a sideways-growing one in place for some years in Bellevue.

These individuals tend to have some frost cracks visible but are otherwise intact after being in residence here for pretty long stretches. A newer, smaller specimen present (due to my involvement) on a site just north of Seattle did fry this past winter, unfortunately.

Taller than 6' (without pruning) with leaves a bit on the dark side but offering white flowers in summer and edible fruits. Flavor varies among seedlings, but largest plant I know of here (north of Ballard) I believe has been said to have good flavor (have not sampled one its productions yet myself).

Local outlets have stocked this shrub in recent years.

my pineapple guava had a pretty good amount of leaf drop during our cold spell. 12 degrees locally.

but still has a decent enough amount of leaves to qualify as a screen.

so they can get below 15 degrees, but i suspect not too much lower.

The 15 degrees was not supposed to be a thrown gauntlet, for starters there is probably some variation among seedlings. Note also that yours was damaged at 12, wherever I saw 15 stated maybe the idea was that the plant could go that far without damage.

My feijoa in Portland will hold onto its leaves for many weeks after a cold spell, but by April it is mostly bare. It completely re-leafs by July. Some varieties of feijoa have acutely-angled branches and dense growth, suitable for a hedge. Mine would not be.

Simply give your feijoa bush a good shake weekly to see how fast it is going bald.

Evergreen huckleberry would take a very long time to get 6 feet tall in the sun. It is "edible" only if you like to work very hard picking the tiny berries. There are two plants a few blocks from here that are kept sheared and they look good all year at about 3 feet high. Shearing nearly eliminates fruit.

Perhaps tsuka could create some espaliered fruit trees near the property line; the trees and espalier would at least reduce travellers.

i guess in summary, you CAN do an edible evergreen hedge in the pacNW, but you might not be satisfied with the results.

how about a fence and a couple vines? now THAT would be easy here.

Where unwanted traffic is a problem it may take a fence to solve it anyway. Small, and sometimes not-so-small shrubs can be broken off, pulled out or killed via soil compaction. Careless or hostile people and animals have no qualms about damaging specimens placed in their way. In a similar vein, last year I had two adults living behind us for some years reach over the fence to cut off a bit of my black bamboo hedge and 40-year-old hybrid rhododendron, throw the prunings down on our side - without prior discussion.

After they were approached the damage to the rhododendron became much worse, to the extent that the eye-level screening it provided is now pretty much eliminated.

I cut down and dug out the rest of the bamboo, as it was full of mites anyway.

And I did not want to hear anymore about it.

This resulted in a request to re-orient our security light, so that it did not shine in the direction of their house. The beef about the bamboo was that it dropped dead leaves on their bark mulch, my rhododendron was claimed to be shading one of theirs - which they had sheared into a tight rectangle about the height of a coffee table.

Shade from my shrub, west of theirs was not that plant's main problem.

It may not be that Fences and Hedges Make Good Neighbors, so much as Fences Make Good Neighbors. If my fence were above head height and solid (instead of wire) I probably would not have had any of the above recent problems at all.

tsuka- If you could put up a minimal fence such as a few T-posts and either wire tiers between them or better a welded wire fence, you could grow the evergreen blueberries and tie them to the wire for good fill. Raspberries also come to mind trained on the wires.

Aronia isn't evergreen but has red fall color and makes a very dense growth and lots of berries high in anti-oxidants.

Evergreen and dense but no fruit (at least I don't get any)- Elaeagnus ebbingei. I don't really recommend the green variety since mine turned into a monster thicket, but the variegated one is very charming and manageable. Elaeagnus macrophylla, hardy to z 7, has edible fruit and is evergreen, but I have not grown it or seen it. Below link to other Elaeagnus sp.

I've seen Arbutus unedo fruit in a parking lot strip, the asphalt adding a lot of heat, but my 3 bushes were badly hit by cold temps and are now 1 non-fruiting bush planted in a field.

Here is a link that might be useful: Elaeagnus on pfaf

Thanks for the suggestions.

The main purpose is to provide privacy since I want to grow food in the yard and want to minimize the knowledge of it.

I think I'll try the Evergreen Huckleberry, perhaps with some semi-dwarf fruit trees near them in order to shade them, with some wire fencing on the outside to keep animals from tunneling through the shrubs.

That should work. I get between 1 and 4 pounds of ehuck berries per year off of one shoulder-high seldom-pruned shrub. They are good used in a crisp.

The main stems and lower plant is quite sturdy; it is the upper branchlets that are brittle and come off easily with any back-bending. Some summer water, otherwise no tending.

As with other heaths small, newly planted evergreen huckleberries will be easily broken off and trampled out where there is foot traffic of the kind liable to do so. And if the soil is not right (sandy etc.) for this shrub poor results or failure is also likely, specialization in this area is also typical of the family. (Many a grouping of rhododendrons, azaleas, heathers - and evergreen huckleberries - in less congenial locations such as parking lot landscaping exhibits failures of many or most of the specimens due to trampling, root rots and other adversities. Often there will be one or two plants that are fairly well developed, some others of intermediate condition and size and another set that are badly stunted or worse - all right within the same part of the site).

As is slow growth. Think of how long you might have to wait for a rhododendron with a moderate growth rate (for a rhododendron), a pieris or a kalmia to get to hedge size. I've got a healthy-looking evergreen huckleberry planted from a gallon pot quite some years ago that may just recently have reached a full 2' high, if that. Tallest of older bushes in a neighbor's planting is now maybe head height, was a substantial plant when I first began to pay it much attention - at least 30 years ago. Planting probably dates from at the 1960s, or earlier, was made by previous owners of the property.

Mine was about head-high after 12 years before I pruned it a little. It does seem that each ehuck plant grows with a mind of it's own, groupings I've seen are of random sizes and shapes, there is not a hedge-like uniformity, except for the nearby sheared plants.

Depending on where one is shopping, it is entirely possible to obtain larger, quite mature specimens of evergreen huckleberry that are already of suitable hedging size and less likely to be damaged or disturbed by passersby. And considering how plentiful these plants are in natural or even cultivated wooded areas locally and the range of varying soil conditions they sprout up in, any decent, well-draining yet moisture retentive garden soil in at least part shade should be well to their liking.

>considering how plentiful these plants are in natural or even cultivated wooded areas locallyThey are? Off the top of my head I can think of a handful of wild specimens in one small part of a fairly sizable nature park north of here, in extreme southwest Snohomish County.

Sure, when one is in sections like the south part of Vashon Island, where suitable conditions occur evergreen huckleberries are all through the madrona-huckleberry-salal communities found there.

>the range of varying soil conditions they sprout up in, any decent, well-draining yet moisture retentive garden soil in at least part shade should be well to their likingOccurs in hypermaritime to maritime summer-wet cool mesothermal climates on moderately dry to fresh, nitrogen-poor soils; its occurrence decreases with increasing elevation and increases with increasing precipitation

--Indicator Plants of Coastal British Columbia (1989, Government of Canada, Province of British Columbia)

hence, presumably, the plush appearance on stabilized dunes immediately behind the open beach under foggy and rainy outer coastal skies - and the often spindly branching in the shade of conifers and the comparatively poor appearance in so many local plantings (away from the outer coast) and even local wild stands.

To see it on the ocean is to see how good this plant can look. Twinberry honeysuckle is a whole different beast out there as well.

Sure e-hucks are slow in gardens, and they look best on the outer coast, but have you ever been to Scenic Beach State Park on the hood canal, or many places on Whidbey Island? Looking very good in those places and producing large amounts of berries. I have several gallons in my freezer right now collected on east side of the hood canal (I'm not telling). Anyway, "legacy" planting is a good thing.

I've already referred here twice to the prevalence of the plant as part of a specific association that occurs here where the particular conditions for this to happen occur. The point is that the plant does not, in fact grow well just about anywhere in our area.

Even its much more abundant frequent associate salal does not grow everywhere, there are large sections where it is not able to dominate like it does where circumstances permit.

Or may not even be present at all.

Its prevalence as part of a specific plant association occurs in relation to natural/native plantings. Although based on what I've witnessed, that association is not necessarily a limiting factor - it can and does spring up independently.

The point is.......this plant adapts easily to the cultivated landscape and is used frequently for that purpose and quite successfully, provided necessary cultural conditions are met -- just like any other landscape plant. If it was that uncommon in gardens, picky of conditions or so darned hard to grow, it would not have been selected as a Great Plants Pick. Two of the primary criteria for inclusion is that the plant "be vigorous and easy to grow by a gardener of average means and experience" and "be adaptable to a variety of soil and fertility conditions".

So the numbers of unhappy specimens with poor color, die-back and spots in local cultivated settings have slipped by you somehow.

Crappy ones are also easily found for sale at local outlets.

Maybe not all that has been offered in this size range but the specimen-sized ones that I've seen myself have all been wild-collected. Such plants will be likely to be needing to go quickly into shaded positions and coddled a bit to amount to a good investment.

Several gallons of e-hucks, now there is a good investment of both time and freezer space.

depending on how you feel about it: you can go ahead and get a permit and get your own wild e-huck. you pay taxes... might as well take your plants.

although, from what i hear, large specimens do not transplant well.

So the numbers of unhappy specimens with poor color, die-back and spots in local cultivated settings have slipped by you somehow.

As apparently so have the well-grown, healthy ones that abound seemed to have slipped by you.

Can we please back off on the persistant negativity with every single post?

Actually, local wild plants are often poor also. This far inland they do seem to need quite a bit of shade to look their best. Like rhododendrons they will grow in a less optimal situation without dying but will not have a good appearance. The big one I mentioned that has been in my neighborhood for decades has a full south exposure.

And looks it.

I'm interested in what is true. If disagreeing with your often partially erroneous statements here makes me (or anyone else) "negative", well, too bad.

That may very well be the case where you are located, but it is not necessarily uniform thoughout all areas of the Pacific Northwest. Maybe you need to get out more. And no one has suggested that a full south exposure is necessarily the ideal location for growing this shrub.

And you need to get over yourself. You are no more in possession of entirely accurate information 100% of the time than anyone else. What's "true" to you is not necessarily true to the rest of the universe. Did I miss your election to the position of The Last Word Authority on Anything Gardening?

I'd like to be there to observe if you two ever meet face to face.

Yeah, my mom has 5 acres out near Shelton, covered with Madrona, evergreen trees, salal, and ehuck. I transplanted some ehuck in the shade of a Red Cedar, I don't quite remember when, maybe even 10 years ago, and it is 4-5' tall and wide, big enough to have berries now. It is very healthy and green.

My yard was logged by PO who also jerkily planted grass everywhere at expense of the native flora, but in places there are salal, Oregon Holly Grape, Trillium, Flowering currant, stinging nettle, miner's lettuce, and so on. It's great to re-establish the local flora a little at a time. Not that ehuck is local, but I have seen wild Red Huckleberry. Ehuck would certainly take patience. Blueberries would be fast.

Ehucks don't grow very tall in full sun in my experience but under garden conditions you might have a shot. The problem is that any pruning you do to promote denseness is going to reduce the amount of fruit produced, probably drastically. And the time factor is a big one as well. s

You might consider planting Jerusalem artichokes for a temporary screen in the meantime.

"Several gallons of e-hucks, now there is a good investment of both time and freezer space"

It sure was a big investment of time, picking and especially cleaning. Good thing there were four of us.

Ehuck pancakes...mmmmm.

Yes, the nature of the small tight foliage and berry clusters of the ehuck makes for a messy harvest. I spread them on cafeteria trays to pick out the junk.

You might check into Nothing But Northwest Natives which is located not far from PDX (Woodland, WA) and has a website/online shopping. Always p[resent at the HPSOP spring sale also. jwww

The one evergreen huckleberry I mentioned above is not now 2' tall, it's about double that height. Probably making 6"-10" per year height increases, presumably depending on conditions it experiences from one year to the next.