Q. We would like to plant a row of purple leaf plum trees to screen our yard from our neighbors. The purple foliage and pink flowers are appealing; however, several people have mentioned a messy ...

A moderate-to-fast-growing small evergreen (evergray?) tree, the purple-leaf acacia reaches 20 to 30 feet tall and wide. Its dense, spreading canopy is easily shaped as a single- or multi-trunk tree.