For tropical plants try crab claw or gingers for the height to screen the fence and little flashes of brilliant colour. They tend to grow upright rather than outwards. They can be easily cut back without looking scrappy. I'm also thinking of perhaps mother in laws tongues and/or moses cradle. These two are very hardy and pretty cheap plants that can take the odd running over with the car... one thing I've noticed about driveway plants is occasionally someone runs them over! You could space the larger gingers a few metres apart and then fill in the rest of the spaces with the smaller plants. They also reproduce and you can fill in any gaps from accidents with babies from other plants. They also can all handle the hot hot sun and don't bush out. The gingers can come in variegated foliage and I think would have a better coverage and shape than cordylines.

Not that I know a great deal about plants (yet) but you may want to include what your climate is and location (shade of a building part of the day or direct sunlight) as this will effect peoples recommendations. for our area (hot sun, sandy soil), we are going for Crepe Myrtles and screens of jasmine and passion fruit vines for narrow spaces.

It always makes my heart sink when a client asks for a "no-maintenance" garden. It tells me they really don't care. In truth, any planting needs a certain amount of care. Plants, like animals, need care. It's true that they're slower than animals to respond to deprivation, but respond they do. And it's not a good look. You might not have a lot of time, or you may not be physically up to a lot of gardening. That's fine - you can choose plants that require a minimum of care and grooming, and if need be hire somebody to do that minimum. But it does require planning. A gardener actively engaged with their garden can (and will!) experiment, try new things, move plants around, notice when things are going right and wrong, and for them a garden is never finished. Contrast that with somebody who wants a garden they don't want to work in or at. They want a garden that is more or less "finished" the day it is installed, rolled out like a stretch of lawn and meant to "behave", to stay static. I can't do a garden like that! Plants grow! They change, the environment around them can change, and what might have succeeded one year is not going to do it the next. It is entirely usual for a planting that just nicely fits a situation to need complete re-planting a few years on because the individual plants have outgrown the site. That's work! It is entirely usual for plants to flower, and for those flowers to set seed and die off. It is entirely usual for some plants to shed leaves as part of their yearly cycle. This "mess" is treated by non-gardeners as a crisis, as a nasty surprise, as something the plants "shouldn't" do. Because it makes work. Well, sorry, but no garden consultant can change the laws of nature. If you want a garden, you've bought work, and if you don't want to do it, you're going to need to pay somebody else. That's fine. Just don't ask for what you can't have.

thank you bigreader. I will look into the fettucine one. I love the limelights but we always have problem with the bug that has the little white sacs. We have lost so many. We spray with white oil but they always win :( I agree, they would look lovely there.