Sound proofing barriers

We have a cottage in NC. In two years, the DOT is planning an extension of a highway which will terminate right at our property. They have determined that they will take the land that the pines are on., but not much more. We have already planted two weeping willows, to help with our privacy. The main trouble, though, is the sound from the road. I was thinking of planting a barrier of quickgrowing flora that might be a good sound barrier. I've been researching fencing, but I'm not sure I want to go that route.
Bamboo strikes me as a possibility, if I can control it. Any thoughts or other ideas?

I don't have any data at hand, but I have researched this in the past.
I have asked on Dave's about sound barrier plants and got no response, so good luck.
What I remember is that small needle like leaves will block sound better than large leaved plants. Of course, anything that will produce the sound of wind, and a waterfall feature for the sound of rapidly moving water will mask the sound of traffic.

If you have a botanic garden in your area, sometimes those gardeners have specifically designed spaces to border highways to block sound.

Let us know. The traffic here sometimes wakes me up and I am only on a rural 2 lane highway.

Oh. I just remembered. A double staggered row of sound baffling plants (pines) with work better than a single row. So a triple row would be even better.

This message was edited Jun 3, 2007 7:29 AM

Thanks, Gloria. We're off to the local arboretum to see wht they've done. Also, I think I'll call over to the extension center and ask the master gardener. Finally I've got a couple of friends who are landscape architects. I'll pick their brains and when all the observations are in, I'll post.
Still, if anybody out ther has more info aboaut bamboo or other flora,I hope you'll post. I'm not sure there is room or time for a row of cedars, my original preference.

Yellowbricks: You might post this in the tree and shrub forum also. Those "tree nuts" over there should be able to recommend a perfect solution. I have a similar problem, & Im sure lots of other people would like to block NOISE.

Do you have enough room to layer, or stagger 2 or 3 rows of conifers?

I just got a book on making living willow structures (amazon link below) and apparently in Britian they make "fedges" -- a combination fence and hedge -- for sound problems around highways. They make two living willow fences and fill them with dirt. This is a really interesting book; I'm fantasizing about a career change...

http://www.amazon.com/Living-Willow-Sculpture-Jon-Warnes/dp/0855328347/ref=sr_1_1/103-2040795-0719825?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1182360502&sr=1-1

brigidlily: my training is in archeology. As an archeologist, I worked in several southeastern states but especially along the Tennessee and Tombigbee rivers. Our job was to recover archeological information that would be destroyed by development. My particular job often was digging "post molds" the remains of fence posts. Aboriginal fences in the southeast were often "wattle and daub" structures, where willow was woven back and forth between fence posts horizontally. then the whole woven fence was covered over with mudd (or daub). This kind of fence would have been quite soundproof, and in retrospect could have been used to plant directly into the fence as one plants into a rock wall.

fence lines around villages often were hundreds of years old . . . expanding outward as the villiage grew. this resulted in a maze of posts which were the remains of houses and and the linear remains of fence posts which surrounded the village at various times as it evolved. Often there were interesting 'repairs', where apparently the fence collapsed. New posts were set, leaving fresh post molds within a line of ancient ones for archeologists to find later.

fences were also used as protective devices against being charged by enemy raiders and were constructed into forts with little square 'lookouts' or bastions along the protective wall of the fort. In some cases these defensive fences were also rebuilt over periods of hundreds of years around villages.

Yellowbricks~ when I lived in the PNW, a neighbor grew bamboo, as a deep privacy fence . They had professionals to entrench a metal barrier around the roots deep in the soil. It was quite stunning and they used their bamboo to make a stunning Japanese garden as well.

very interesting, gloria! We used to build things of natural substances and I'm sure the earth was better off for it. I'm intending to use wattles to some extent or other -- my intro to wattles was from the Yeats poem -- "and a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made..." -- I think wattles look so cottagey.

Now if I can find some willow! Coastal willow grows down here a lot, if I can just get permission to cut some. I suspect they'll be glad for me to cull some of it out.

garden6, a lot of people use bamboo down here for living fences as well. It's very pretty, very thick, but it can be invasive. Solution -- keep up with it!

I used to help my boyfried make willow furniture. It is extremely pliable if you soak it in water. Kept damp you can bend it to any arc over a form. That way all the loops or arcs are the same size. We just collected river willow from the slews and creek beds around here. One problem. Almost all of it has bugs in it that eat the wood from the inside out. And they will eat your wood floors also if you put the funiture in a house with wood floors. Ive heard that you can treat the wood with boric acid (for roaches) dissolved in shaving foam, but have not tried that yet.

It seems like I once read a really good article by Joel Lerner ("Green Scene" columnist in Washington Post) on just this topic. If I can dig it up, I'll post the link here.

Brigidlily~ I have heard about the invasiveness and sheer frustration in dealing with the bamboo shooting up all over the yard. I think the metal barrier is supposed to prevent that, but of course I can't vouch for that as I now on the prairie! ;0)

there are different types of bamboo. Some are runners and some are clumpers. There are some tree bamboos that are not invasive, but then their growth habit may not be as an effective sound barrier, either.
Supposedly a concrete header would contain them, but I have seen old bamboo plantings where little bamboos plants are growing out of the cracks in the concrete. One planting in particular at an old house here, has bamboo runners coming up in the pavement of the adjacent street.

Interesting thread. I've seen bamboo grown in old concrete swimming pools to contain it break free so I don't necessarily think bamboo is an answer. Weeping willows have root systems that can cause problems with everything from septic fields to foundations and they are a very messy tree so you might not be happy with those in the long run- I know I wasn't with their branches strewn here there and everywhere. My husband is a structural engineer who generally deals with bridges but he was mentioning something to me about designing roads at an elevation considerably lower than surrounding homes to reduce noise pollution. In many situations, this is not possible as roads (and homes) were built decades ago and then there would be the issue of designing drainage but he has created several sound barrier walls that seem to do the trick and I can't imagine a homeowner not being able to re-create the effect somehow. Something I would like to suggest to you would be to consider tracking down and contacting the project engineer to share your concerns with him/her. Engineers are pretty decent people and you might be pleasantly surprised in that he/she just might come up with something that hasn't been tossed out on the table yet. There's one particular landscaper here in this state that does a lot of work for the Feds as well as for the State and I suspect this issue comes up alot. They might have some ideas too if you'd like me to ask. I have no problems calling them because fluke may have it, I went to school with their kids and they were a very nice family. Other than that, my husband is a pretty quiet person but I'm sure he would talk to you on the phone and might have an idea or two.

Re: roads at a lower elevation than homes.

Ive also heard of using earth berms as sound barriers. i.e. building a higher elevation of earth between the road and area to be protected from sound. This would require some earth moving equipment (maybe work it out with the road crew).

Whatever you come up with, please let us know. Noise pollution is a growing problem everywhere.