What type of trees make natural canopies?

heimdale

Greetings,

I'm looking for some info regarding a pet project of mine.

I've got some property that I'm going to be renovating and doing a great deal of planting and gardening to bring it up to speed. One thing I've always been fascinated by are those properties with tree canopies over the driveway leading from the entrance of the property to the main area where the home is, and this property has the space and the driveway to plant suitable trees on both sides of the driveway to make it happen.



Something like the above picture shows. However I'm not quite sure which tree is best suited to this. The property is in Alabama, thus hardiness index of 8. I'm also not sure as to the spacing that would be required to accomplish this, and if I should do anything special to guarantee the canopy instead of ending up with trees growing straight up and having open sky over the driveway. This is obviously a time investment of waiting for trees to grow to the proper height and spread but it's something I'm very serious about and want to take past the daydream/visualizing stage into an actual planning stage.

I have no real preferences as to the tree type provided it's picturesque. Whatever works and makes my daydream a reality I'm fine with. Any help I can get in this regard would be greatly appreciated.