Your lot looks pretty flat for a strawberry tree, you might want to mound up a planting area at least a foot to make sure no water can puddle or collect around this arbutus.

A strawberry tree will give very little privacy from your neighbor's window for a very long time. Usually the the lawn should have more distance from the fence where you need privacy, and less where you want to maintain the view. With more distance you have more options as to what to plant to block the view.
How high is your deck from the lawn and what is the light blue in a reverse 'L' next to it?

I think you have too much gravel in the design next to the lawn.

The Lilac at the corner of your house is in the wrong place. Lilacs make poor foundation shrubs because they are deciduous.
Just my opinions, of course.

The deck is about 2.5 feet off the lawn(which then slopes down). The blue backwards L is a rock-edged raised bed that I'm putting some strawberries in.

I'm willing to change the shape of the lawn fairly drastically, but I'd prefer to have a smaller lawn. I need to remove it from the north side of the deck though, as it never gets any direct sun and about 50% of it is moss.

What would be your recommendation for a broadleaf evergreen that isn't pyramidal, cylindrical, or holly to block the view of my neighbor's house? I expect that anything that will be easy to maintain years down the road will be fairly slow-growing and take 5-10 years to grow in.

"I expect that anything that will be easy to maintain years down the road will be fairly slow-growing and take 5-10 years to grow in."

Not running bamboo grown in a barrier.:-)

Why have any grass? One of my favorite yards is Gail Austin's garden full of daylilies, lilies, Clematis on poles and wire fencing, all heavily mulched, soaker-hosed, with chipped wood paths.

haha, I considered bamboo initially, but I really don't like the look of it at all.

In my front yard (in a couple years when I get around to tearing out all of my overgrown juniper bushes and dumping serious money) I'm going to remove all of the grass and replace it with groundcovers like thyme and irish moss.

The back yard is the running place of my pooch and I don't want him to tear up groundcovers and whatnot. Plus I'm thinking a little in terms of resale value. Our home is a prime candidate for a young family and I'm sure people with kids would want a lawn.

Various lovely hardy clumping bamboos are on the local market. These do not spread rapidly, to pop up yards away. Instead their compact rootstocks are like those of irises. Some kinds produce an almost exquisite effect with their slender clums and small, delicate leaves.

These are naturalistic interplanted with rhododendrons, often forming a distinct zone with rhododendrons and conifers at high altitudes in the Sino-Himalayan region.

Ok, here's a secondary plan. I moved around and tried to group the mock oranges, added a katsura tree, and got rid of a lot of gravel. I put a graveled square area in the southwest corner that I'm going to train the dog to use as his "bathroom area" to keep the rest of the yard clear. I'll put in a pet waste composter below ground over there. I also put in a key. The yellow dots on top of the other colored dots mean that that particular thing is already in the yard. I'm still not sure how to edge the lawn. I hate mowing around rocks, but hate the look of landscape timbers and concrete/plastic curbing.

{{gwi:20827}}

I wouldn't count on 'Marina' being hardy in Bothell area. Especially if you are up on a ridge with some elevation to it. A valley bottom frost pocket would also be terrible.

Definitely not a good choice for a key position, where if it got nailed a big hole would be left in need of screening once again.

All the stock of this coming from big California growers and being presented in local garden centers is rootbound anyway. Do not plant rootbound trees, they are apt to fall over later.

Katsura tree grows over 60' tall when happy (good moist soil, with no summer drought). Otherwise it may grow slowly, enabling it to be used in a small space for years - but may also look like a tree that wishes it was in a better spot.

Here is a link that might be useful: Article - Trees that merit planting in Seattle by Arthur Lee Jacobson

Thank you for the link bboy. I find myself frustrated in regards to options for this spot. I'm really not a fan of conifers that have screening capabilities, I hate the look of bamboo, and I don't like hollies. What other options do I have for this spot?

Evergreen is my number one priority, and I feel that with all the plants out there, I shouldn't have to "settle" for something that I don't want to look at. I don't mind watering every couple days through the summer for the first few years to help get these plants established, but I also don't want something that's going to be finicky long term. I like the look of a tree with a wide canopy and a couple trunks. Do you have any input? All of the trees in your link are either conifers or deciduous.

This might be a good replacement for the katsura tree, it grows a little larger in width, being on the large side of my acceptable range, but has fragrant flowers that make up for the large size.

Tilia tomentosa ---Silver Linden
Immense rounded shade tree with aphid-free, drought-tolerant foliage. Sweet flowers in summer.

I still need to figure out an evergreen.

one general critique in terms of design: everything is kinda bunched up along that east fence line. kinda like a room where all the furniture is pushed up against the walls.

i can think of a couple solutions, i think pushing out the grass towards the fence in one spot, and have it lead to a covered seating area or something like that. maybe a grape arbor with seating right up against the fence? maybe where those mock oranges are (if there enough light for grapes...)

then you can break up your grass blob with maybe a mounded herb garden just south of your raised beds. if you make it maybe 3 feet at its highest, fill it with some good looking herbs, that will create a nice focal point in front of your tree/shrub zone. with nice green contrast from the lawn behind it.

now for your evergreen tree...

my arbutus marina took the portland freeze this year in stride. totally unprotected. no sign of stress. i am not sure if you are prone to deeper freezes then what we got this year.

you could go whole hog and just get THE REAL DEAL. Arbutus menziesii.

i really like umbellularia californica, what oregonians call myrtlewood trees. leaves work well for cooking. in 50 years you'll have a valuable piece of timber as well!

if you are prepared for a messy (ish) tree, you can go loquat. it will introduce a tropical look to the garden, which might not be what you are going for. however, nice screening, large evergreen leaves. and the fruit is pretty good eating. well, CAN be. if you buy one, its most likely not a tree chosen for good fruiting. even the not so great fruit is pretty good over vanilla ice cream. the great fruit is tasty right off the tree.

When it falls below the minimum temperature for loquat trees in this area, as it did during 1990 they really go down badly - looking for all the world as though set ablaze. Recovery was slow but most I keep track of have came back since.

It appears part of the problem you have been having is rejecting viable suggestions based on stereotypic preconceptions and/or brief looks at internet photo collections and pages. It cannot be told here whether "the look" of bamboos, hollies etc. is something you would see in all of them or just certain kinds, like English holly for instance. Most species of hollies are actually not prickly, as I mentioned before not even all forms of English holly are armed.

The clumping hardy bamboos I mentioned are quite different in character from golden bamboo and other common running types. But they are also grasses and they are also bamboos, so the look you don't like may still be found in them. It depends on what, exactly your distaste is based on.

If you have looked at suggestions made here including I think the plant selection section of the Sunset WESTERN GARDEN BOOK and not gotten to where you want to be then probably you really should visit some local labeled collections to see if anything jumps out at you. There are some good screening plantings in the parking area at Children's Hospital in Seattle. No labeling there but during working hours groundskeepers are present who can answer plant identification questions. There is also a botanical garden at the Ballard Locks, a botanical garden in Wilberton Hill Park in Bellevue, a 200 acre arboretum south of the university in Seattle, an arboretum in Rhody Ridge County Park, between Bothell and Lynnwood, and so on.

I think that it's really necessary for me to go visit gardens and make my decisions that way. I've driven through various neighborhoods that are 20+ years old to try to get some ideas, but haven't gotten very far. I was near a nursery today in Lynnwood and ended up wandering around for about an hour just trying to get some ideas. I ended up talking to someone who gave me suggestions, wax leaf privet, a large variegated variant of euonymus, portugese laurel, and evergreen magnolia. He, like bboy warned against arbutus unedo as both him and a close friend of his lost 20+ year old specimen trees over the winter. I suspect that spending a few mornings wandering through arboretums and gardens is probably my best bet, thanks for the advice bboy.

My main complaint with Holly is that I don't really like the very shiny, dark green leaves, or the shape of it. Perhaps I'll find a holly at an arboretum that will knock my socks off, and I'm certainly open to that, but of all the variants of holly that I've seen (i've been keeping my eyes open since that thread;) ) I haven't found one that I want in my garden. There are a lot of great variants of bamboo, and they look very nice in many types of gardens, but I don't like the stem parts very much for my yard. I'm not a huge grass person.

I think my style of landscaping can be most closely related to cottage gardening, I love blooms, fragrance, and interesting foliage.

You're talking about English holly and similar forms. The one Ian suggested, for instance looks very different. But hollies are slow anyway, you would wait many years for the house to disappear.

There are lots of good-looking strawberry trees around, what happened last winter depends on where you are. And what kinds of soils and exposures specific specimens are located in. Since you have indicated your location as Bothell things like arbutus and loquat that might be fine most years in Seattle could be problematic for you. Even as close in as Rhody Ridge it gets too cold for such plants. The old Garden Valley nursery on the south facing slope north and east of the Bothell-Woodinville interchange had a history of recording some really low temperatures. When I was at Molbak's recently there was frost injury to the flowers of 'Avondale' redbuds and winter hazels in the sales yard. The winter hazels at Wells-Medina nursery seen earlier the same day were not damaged.

Really the wax myrtle was probably the ticket but something made you think it wouldn't do. You should go look at the wax myrtles at Children's and elsewhere that have been in place for some years. If the lack of conspicuous flowers is deterrent plant a Hooker willow with it. This native ouer coastal species is more handsome and conspicuous than the exotic pussy willow species that are presented here by garden centers, and grows wild mixed with the wax myrtle at Long Beach etc. The two similar growth habits look very well together.

An English garden plant book suggests planting willows with hollies. Hooker willow + wax myrtle would be another version.

Male Hooker willows produce large spectacular catkins. Both sexes bear large handsome leaves, blackish green on top and silvery beneath. Look for it in native plant collections at garden centers or order through the mail.

My only reluctance in using pacific wax myrtle (which seems as though it would be the ideal screen except for the height) is that it tops out at 15-18 feet and I'm worried that it won't effectively screen the area. I suppose it's hardiness and ability to block most of the area should probably make up for that. Perhaps I'll modify the plan to include a trio of them and if they don't work out I can always pull them out.

One at Seattle Pacific University was 30' tall a few years ago. One in Oregon was 38' tall during 1972.

In windy oceanfront conditions, it can be a low, flattened mass. Grown out of wind, it's a big shrub or tree to 10-30 ft. tall and wide, usually with many upright trunks. One of the best-looking native plants for gardens

-- Sunset Western Garden Book (2007, Sunset Publishing, Menlo Park)

Well that puts my mind at rest, looking up stats for it online, it sounded like it wouldn't get so large. If I can find one at an arboretum to see what it looks like, I'll likely get a few.