Good morning.  I am looking for a fast growing tree species to put on west side of our property.  Do not need fruit trees (although could be nice), but do not want a tree that is 'unfriendly' with poison berries or dripping sticky sap etc..   Thanks in advance for any comments.

Try 'whogratchong' tree. I call it an umbrella tree because of its spreading branches. This one is three years old.

Fantastic!  Just what I am looking for.  My enthusiastic Bro in Law got carried away and his idea of trimming back a mature tree that had got too high was to trim it at the bottom.  As in, it is gone.  Is this spelling 'whogratchong' correct?  I just googled it without luck.  Thanks  B

Oops.  My wife knows of this tree and in fact we have one, not so big as your photo.  She said ours has problems with insects and it gets eaten and suffers rapid growth because of it.  Do you have an idea of how to protect them?  Thanks 

Neem trees (ต้นสะเดา) grow fast.  We've grown many over the years.  But in the past 8 or so years, we've planted a wide variety of palms.  Relatively cheap, easy to grow, water frequently and you'll have decent shade.  The east and west sides of our home are blanketed with green palms.....perfect shade, taller than the roof of our house, no worries about wind storms blowing them over.

We have a Don Sadow, Neem tree, they do grow fast, it is now a big tree, the wife is getting worried that it is too big and a strong wind will blow it down on to the house.

We also have bamboo that grows fast and you can eat the shoots, but they are a lot of leaves and they blow all over the place, so do the Sadow leaves, a lot in our gutters which I have to clean out every year.

11 hours ago, notrub said:

Fantastic!  Just what I am looking for.  My enthusiastic Bro in Law got carried away and his idea of trimming back a mature tree that had got too high was to trim it at the bottom.  As in, it is gone.  Is this spelling 'whogratchong' correct?  I just googled it without luck.  Thanks  B

Don't know the correct spelling, sorry. I'll try to get wifey to Google and post a link.

 

We haven't experienced any insect damage to this year so I couldn't say how to protect it. It grows close to the pond so gets plenty of water. Maybe yours is suffering lack of water or feed?

 

We are going to plant 6 or 8 more to shade the broiler house in dry, sandy soil so we'll see how they do in that position.

 

Thai saddow (neem) trees we also have, they pop up like weeds and are very bushy and quick-growing as orhers have said here. The palms are a good idea too. 

https://www.google.co.th/search?q=ต้นหางกระจง&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-gb&client=safari#imgrc=Bgl3LJf5oOJHPM:

 

This tree, hope link works......yep, just checked.

 

The picture shows a tree that has been topped so it grows out, not up.

 

Hint to your BiL chop top not bottom branches.