If you want something that will provide year-round cover, i.e. shrubs and trees, the best thing to do IMHO is first pick up a couple good shrub-and-tree gardening books, preferably ones that concentrate on your region. Read them to get a good sense of what will and will not likely be hardy in your yard (in terms of sun/shade, water needs, soil type requirements, winter coldness). Then go to all the local nurseries you can find, and see what they're selling for what price at what size. Pick the ones that seem like the best deal
The reason I say this is because there are hardly any woody plants that are what you might call *fast* growing (like, more than 1-2 feet per year
maximum) and the few that ARE fast-growing will generally get too big too fast and quickly become PROBLEMS. (Poplars, aspen, tree-sized willows, and Leyland cypress [which is probalby not hardy in your zone anyhow]). So your best bet is to buy healthy affordable plants that are already decent size. You can't predict which spp these will be. Sometimes a nursery just happens to have a bunch of rather large good-looking plants of some particular species that they wanna get rid of and have priced down. Have to look around.
Avoid buying trees/shrubs from places like
Walmart or Home Depot unless you REALLY know what you're looking at, plant health wise (including roots). Trees/shrubs from big box stores like that have often been seriously damaged by poor shipping and poor, or non, watering, and may never grow well for you.
In Western Michigan, the most likely spp might include lilacs, ninebark (the big ones like Darts Gold and Diabolo, not the new smaller cultivars), maybe forsythia, schubert or amur chokecherry, the *small* willows (coyote willow etc - NOT corkscrew or dappled [Hakura-nishiki] which don't grow so much), bridalwreath [vanhouttei] spirea although it isn't the fastest grower, and possibly birch but I'm concerned that chcikens scratching around birch roots would be awfully hard on the tree. There are plenty others, of course, as well.
In the meantime, while woody plants are growing in and/or annuals are growing up, you might need to make nonliving shelters like trellises, teepees, a table for chickens to hide under, etc.
Have fun,
Pat
