I'm hoping for suggestions from people who know a little about the growth habits of various tree's root systems.
On one side of my house there are three windows (2 bedrooms & a bathroom) that have a view of the neighbor's popup camper. The windows are spaced closely together spanning about 20'.
The neighbor's frog (room over garage) has a straight view into any of my 3 windows. Between the lack of privacy and the ugly view I keep the blinds closed all the time which is what I'm trying to remedy. There's only about
10' between my foundation and the prop. line and the neighbor despises trees that drop leaves or any other kind of debris. This means anything that I plant can't have a canopy that will cross the line and leave debris in their driveway.So...I'm looking for a living screen, something to provide privacy for those windows but also be pretty for us to look at from inside. It needs to be either a naturally vertical grower or very acceptable pruning like the crapemyrtle. I'd prefer it be a very fast grower so I can reap results more quickly.
I currently have a bunch of crape myrtles in the yard and I'm >< close to planting one in the middle of the 3 windows. The *only* thing stopping me, since that tree has everything else I want, is the horizontally spreading root system. I already have a very mature crapemyrtle planted against the front of the house (not by me) that has caused some chimney foundation/footing damage.
I've been searching online but can't seem to find much information on the direction roots grow on trees. I find just about everything else I'd need to know but this one is important. Three trees I've found that I like visually, and that seem to be able to remain managable in terms of mature height are:
Smoke Tree - Royal Purple Redbud Weigela
Unfortunately I don't know about their roots. Any suggestions are welcome.