Above-fence Screening: mixed trees or hedge?

2 years ago

Our garden has a long fence line (~30m) separating it from a small road that’s regularly used as a pedestrian shortcut. We’d like to add substantial above-fence screening and I’m keen on the idea of a fairly informal ‘elevated’ hedge or regularly spaced trees (we have a clipped Leylandii hedge on the other side, so another formal hedge might be a bit much). My husband doesn’t want it to encroach on the lawn too much, so wide spreading trees aren’t an option, but we would need a few tall-ish plants to screen the windows of neighbouring houses. Does anyone have any suggestions of what to plant, or even better, pictures of how they have dealt with a similar situation? I quite like the idea of a bit of autumn colour too, if I could have everything!

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Comments (6)

minnie101
2 years ago
Pleached trees could be an option if you wanted to cover the whole fence but they’re really expensive especially for your size of garden! The purple beech looks nice on the link.

i know absolutely nothing about gardening but used italian cypress in our old house to prevent overlooking, again not particularly cheap but they grew really quickly but won’t give the colour change. i just planted them strategically to avoid overlooking

https://www.hopesgrovenurseries.co.uk/shop/pleached-trees/
keysnatcher
Original Author
2 years ago
Thank you! I suspect our soil is a bit wet for beech or Italian cypress (it’s fairly thick clay, unfortunately!) but I do like the pleached tree idea. The other side of the fence is a rather brambly grass verge, and I don’t fancy the idea of trying to trim the trees from the other side, so it would have to be a very unkempt pleached screen, but I don’t mind that too much.
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I would look at a standard laurel. Something like this will cost around £120 each for a decent size. You should plant these every 120cm-150cm. Don't forget that you can add height by building a raised border around the perimeter. You could also look at Photinia Red Robin. But get them professionally pruned each year as photinias will get very straggly if you just trim the outside branches as you need to take out some of the centre wood to promote thicker growth.
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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.
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Photinia Red Robin..............great Evergreen shrub / bush. Lovely red leaves on the new growth which then turn green. You can buy these as larger or smaller shrubs depending on your budget. Pear Trees won't work, for one thing they're not evergreen and another it's a tree. Don't be fooled by this 'patio / dwarf' variety, all poppycock, they will reach their normal height if not constantly pruned. We keep all of our fruit trees to around 9 feet, but that's too high for outside a lounge window. We have our Photinias planted for privacy reasons, but we've got them as standard plants. Therefore, the light comes in over and under the head of the plant, but the head is around 5 feet high and stops people seeing directly in. This is exactly what ours look like except this is in a pot and ours are in the ground. I would have gone outside and taken pics ( maybe later ), but it's tipping it down again!
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Mary Ketchley
2 years ago
What about bamboo? It’s fast to grow (could be a downside) and evergreen. We have used some at the back of our house which is very overlooked and I love it. We already had some beds there, made from sleepers so I felt reasonably confident that they would retain the bamboo stop it taking over. Not sure if you can spot it in this picture?
keysnatcher
Original Author
2 years ago
That does look beautiful; I love how light and airy it is. I’ve heard cautionary tales about bamboo spreading (though our neighbours have it in a raised bed and it’s a bit rampant, but mostly contained) so would definitely put it in a container of some kind as you have done. Towards the bottom end of the garden behind the buddleia we have an area of block paving where the border is very narrow (80cm) so this would be ideal here. Thanks for the suggestion!
Mary Ketchley
2 years ago
The light and airy feel is what I like too, it looks lovely when there’s a light breeze. We bought two pots that were being flogged in the garden centre. They probably looked a bit past their best but they were still something like £30 each. When we got them home we just chopped each pot into 2 or 3 clumps before planting it out so that they spread across the space better. We have 2 varieties one is golden (phyllostachys aurea I think) and one is black (phyllostachys nigra I think). The black one is significantly taller but I’m not sure if that’s due to the variety or whether it just established itself better.
pannacotta
2 years ago
Look at ornamental pear, Pyrus Chanticleer, ideal for your situation and almost evergreen.

https://www.ornamental-trees.co.uk/pyrus-calleryana-chanticleer-tree-p462

Above-fence Screening: mixed trees or hedge?

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minnie101

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Above-fence Screening: mixed trees or hedge?

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minnie101

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