Texas Gardening: Need Advice Re: Adding (Native?) Evergreens to Old Treeline, 1 by dsmorris

dsmorris wrote:
My husband and I recently bought a .82 acre lot in Historical Downtown Garland (with a small house that we'll be moving) where we plan to build a home next year or so. The lot is a very irregular triangle shape, with the longest side running along the edge of a 4-lane road. The old post & wire fenceline there is lined with misc. trees, all deciduous and most unidentifiable. There are a couple hackberries, one elm of some kind, a couple short/scraggly redbuds, and a bunch of mystery trees. They're mostly undistinguished, but they're 30 feet tall and make a great screen all summer while they have leaves.

We want to go ahead and beef up the treeline on that side with evergreens now, to give them time to grow for a bit before we build and live there. I'm passingly familiar with the evergreen trees that seem to grow well in this area, including Southern Magnolias (and the dwarf variety), Yaupon Hollies, Texas Mountain Laurels, and Post Cedars (Blueberry Junipers).

So my questions are, what other evergreens should I be considering that are hardy, low maintenance, and fairly fast-growing? Will ANY evergreens be able to hold their own and actually grow when planted between/among or in the summer shadow of the existing treeline? The treeline runs along the S & SE border, so the new trees would mainly get late afternoon sun. We could trim and thin the branches of the existing trees above the new ones, but we'd like to save the existing trees if possible. They're undistinguished, but they're tall and healthy. Plus they were there first.

I'll attach a picture of a small section of the treeline, taken facing almost due east. The pic was taken a few weeks ago as the leaves were just starting to come in. We'll be building a 2-story house in about the same place as the existing house in the picture, so ideally the evergreen screen in that area would eventually reach a mature height of 25 or 30 ft or more to screen the upstairs from a view of the road on the other side.