Buffering land from road

about to move to an acre (which feels luxurious) and hoping to do some small scale food forestry in the "currently all grass" front yard. i'm feeling concerned about planting fruit/nut trees too close to the road (only 35 mph but a popular state highway, so decently frequented). recommendations for plants to form a thicket or hedge that may also detoxify or interrupt toxic runoff? in piedmont NC, i'm sure it's quite heavy clay. no insight on water/runoff patterns yet as i don't live there yet and am just in early pie in the sky phase!

Hawthorn is probably your best bet for a tough, dense hedge that'll handle road conditions. Native to the US, handles clay well, and the berries are useful too. Elderberry is another good one for clay and it grows fast. For the food forest side, I'd put the hedge in first and let it establish before planting fruit trees behind it, gives them a bit of shelter from road spray and wind.

Look around for hedges nearby, and copy them. If the particular species isn’t to your liking, at least pick something similar looking. The privacy and noise abatement are yield enough in my book, but flowers for pollinators would be a bonus.  Pick something easy to maintain and budget for the tools to do it.

This is similar to my issue...a divided highway only 100 yards or so from the house.  There's a narrow strip of a neighbor's land between, and she runs goats on it so no chance of dense buffer there. My edge is growing up pretty well in wild stuff, but it's mostly deciduous, and not very dense yet.  So I'm gradually filling up the remaining space, currently an overgrown pasture, with everything fast, aggressive, and evergreen I can think of.  Bamboo is near the top of my list....it will be confined by goats on one side, driveway on another, and my own mowing on the inside, so I'm fine if it fills up the rest.  But it can kill back in the worst of our winters. I'm moving cedars and poplars out there too as I find them.  I'd really like some Leyland cypress, if I could only find one nearby to get cuttings from.  Got holly rooting, and privet likely to follow.  For this purpose....a fast screen in a confined space, I'm after all the invasive, aggressive stuff I can get!   Since I also burn wood for fuel and may well have sheep or goats of my own one day, the stuff will not fail for uses if it gets out of hand...