Attractive shrubs to screen fence
We're not 'gardeners'! We have a reasonably large, plain, square lawned garden. The fence on the left hand side is ours and we replaced it a couple of years ago. The fence on the right is the neighbour's and is in a state of disrepair - every time a panel blows down he replaces it with a new panel, which creates an untidy effect of old and new panels in over-height, not-very straight concrete posts.
We're looking for suggestions of attractive, low maintenance bushes, shrubs or flowering grasses which we could plant in front of the fence, both to screen it and, eventually, grow slightly higher to give a little more privacy. We probably wouldn't plant the whole lot at once - but we'd like a plan so we can plant gradually and end up with what looks like a planned arrangement rather than random planting!
The garden is slightly sloping towards this fence and towards the bottom corner and the ground is very heavy clay - gets very waterlogged in wet weather. The whole grassed area gets almost full sun, most of the year. The fence is approximately 30m long.
The only other question is that currently there is a wire around the lawn for the Robomow which will obviously have to be moved. Approximately how much further in from the fence should we move it to give a reasonable border to accommodate shrubs?
We'd be very grateful for suggestions.
Comments (13)
Rachel Smith
5 years agoRelated Discussions
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Comments (10)E D is right. A garden boundary with another neighbour shouldn’t exceed 2 meters in height. However if the neighbour agrees to some trellis then it shouldn’t be a problem just be aware that if they change their mind or if they move out and you have new neighbours then you could be forced to take it down. Same applies to evergreen hedging which exceeds 2 meters. Jonathan’s suggestion for Portuguese Laurel is a good one tho as it’s very easy to grow and can be easily pruned to shape. Personally I would go for 1 deciduous tree or 2 deciduous shrubs but look up the eventual height and spread. For a tree I might look for a blossom, Prunus sargentii (Sargent’s cherry) looks to be a nice shape for the space. For shrubs there’s lots of choice but have a look at Virburnum oculus ‘Roseum’ (Snowball tree), Philadelphus coronarius (Sweet mock orange), and good old buddliea (butterfly bush). These should grow well with very little care and if they do get out of hand then should be relatively easy to prune back....See MoreBack Fence Ideas
Comments (7)Virburnum tinus - evergreen shrub with white flowers in winter/spring There is a great Story on Houzz by Patricia Tyrrell called something like 10 trees suitable for a small garden which may help. It’s just that a lot of trees grow enormous with time and can engulf a garden. I’ve noticed one of your neighbours has already put one in. There aren’t many evergreen trees unless you go down the conifer route which can be a minefield! There are many shrubs that grow to 8-10 feet which may suit your garden. The RHS (Royal Horticultural Society) have a great website where you can search for Tall Evergreen Shubs, for example. They also tell you how easy, or not, they are to grow. I see a lot of pleached trees on Houzz etc, but I’ve read they do need shaping and training to keep them in check, so do need maintenance, Heres a few evergreen shrubs that may fit the bill. Ceanothus - evergreen with blue flowers in May Mahonia - evergreen with fragrant yellow flowers in spring Mallow - evergreenish with pink flowers in summer...See MoreA small tree, climber or shrub for very narrow space?
Comments (8)This is a rather expensive solution but it would give you instant cover. You could potentially look at creating your own version of this using some fairly tall individual plants and either planting in the very narrow gap or, as in this example in a trough/window box. I guess you might need to periodically scrape away top few centimetres of soil and refresh with new compost and/or mulch to keep nutrition levels in pot topped up. This example is a jasmine which would hopefully smell amazing but there are other options too (it says this trough is 20cm wide) https://www.hedgesdirect.co.uk/acatalog/star-jasmine-green-screen-trachelospermum-jasminoides-180cm-high-120cm-wide.html#SID=60...See MorePatchwork fence issue!
Comments (0)Hello! Our house is ex local authority and a few of our neighbors are still local authority houses. Our deeds don't list our boundaries but from speaking to our neighbors we believe that our right hedge and end fence belong to use. The left boundary belongs to our neighbor and is a rather ugly chain link fence, however as it's still local authority and does provide a boundary, they won't replace it. As a result, the previous owners of our house planted a thick hedge in the garden to mask the fence. However- we've started to remove some overgrown shrubs at the end of the garden and discovered that where our hedge ends, a mash up of trellis, broken panels and various other substitutes for the fence begin! Our boundary fence at the bottom of the garden ends abruptly and is then replaced with a council built smaller fence which belongs to the house behind us... There are two houses behind us and the council built fence doesn't span the width of our garden, so I can only presume this is why the previous owners added their own fence in front of this. See the photos for what we're dealing with 🙈 This corner of our garden is going to be a gravel area for our firepit, eventually will have some form of trellis running perpendicular to the hedge (parallel to our back fence) which will make the area feel more secluded. Our issue at the moment is that we can't decide or visualise how to finish off the fencing! I like uniform and our current situation is far from it. Do we try to match our current fence panel to finish off our end boundary and carry this around the corner to meet our hedge? Or plant some evergreen climbers on trellis to eventually give us some privacy? If we get metal or composite privacy screens will they look odd / will you still see the mess behind them? We can't decide what to do! Any advice?!...See MoreRachel Smith
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