Any ideas for suitable trees for privacy in a smallish garden

Hi
I am new to this forum and hoping for some advice as I am a complete novice when it comes to gardening.

I have recently moved house and although I knew they were building some new build behind the house at time, I didn't realise how much higher my house is to the new builds (I can see into their ground floor rooms, even though I have 6' high fencing). The houses face directly towards the back of my house.

I want to plant some trees to act as privacy at the bottom of the garden. I just don't know where to start and garden centres have not been much help.

My garden is 40' long and about 45' wide, the sun rises just to the left of the new builds and I have full sun in my garden from about 11am from the right hand side so any trees I plant would not affect my sunlight (after 10am ish).

The garden will be landscaped over the next two years which will include a large patio area gravelled/slabbed along the width of the bottom of the garden and about 8' in depth. This is the area I need to plant the screening/trees.

I would like a mixture of trees, ideally would want to keep them controlled at about 20' and ideally evergreen.

So a few question really: what kind of trees, how close to plant them, can they be pruned from the top when get too tall etc. I don't want any itchy conifer types though as I get rashes/itchy when pruning them. I've had bamboo, silver birch and eucalyptus suggested so far?


I hope I've provided enough information to help establish what I am looking for and suggestions would be very gratefully received.

Many thanks

Sharon

 

Many thanks for the advice. I had actually thought of trellis, but wasn't sure if that counted as fencing (as it's already 6'). Can I put trellis/screening on top without the same 6' rule applying then?
Love those climbing roses by the way... Will definitely get some of those!

 

I'm not sure whether trellis on top of a fence would be included in the 6ft rule, but from how you described it, you could always ring the planning office they should be able to clarify

But considering that you can see into their ground floor rooms, the privacy and you taken action to put into place a form of screening which will benefit them as much as yourself. Then I ponder if you broke the 6ft rule with a trellis are they really going to be complaining!

The only real problem concerning this rule, is if the fence can be seen from the public highway where it could be seen by a Mr/Mrs Jobsworth who might complain!

 

I would plant a Pleached hedge along your back fence. Not cheap if you want "instant", but any other route is 5 - 7 years to get it established.


https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/Profile?pid=155

Cheapest route I know of is "flat headed Lime trees" from Ashridge Trees (bare root only, so need to plant Nov-Feb). The plants will be anything from 3M to 4M tall, but "skinny", £34 each (bit cheaper if you want 10+). Once established you can clip the fronts to about 3' thickness each side

http://www.ashridgetrees.co.uk/stan...-headed-linden-tilia-euchlora-ready-to-pleach

Lime is not evergreen ... so you will only have a framework of branches in winter - they can be "dense" though.

Bamboo is handy in that it has a fixed height It will take 3 - 5 years to put out "culms" that are full height, but each year (if looked after well) it will put out culms significantly taller / thicker than previous years. Make sure you buy a clumping variety, rather than a "runner" or, if you plant a runner, put in a really good quality root barrier - that stuff aint cheap :(

Eucalyptus is quick growing, looks nice, has a habit of dropping branches ... Eucalyptus is quick happy being cut hard back, so you would be able to control it, but cutting anything back is a big job when it is 20' tall! (The best tool for that job IMHO is a Henchman Hi-step - incredibly stable when you are up there reaching at full stretch to something at the limit of reachability

Also not cheap, but I got mine off eBay for a couple of hundred £££ - so with patience I am sure you would get a bargain price too - and you have several years to look out for a good deal before you need it in anger.

Here's mine against my Lime tree Pleach:


and with the extension feet on:


You can lean it back onto the wheels to move it to the next bit to be "serviced"

See my Henchman review here:
http://gardenerscorner.co.uk/forum/...cent-purchases-2014.56088/page-14#post-809192

Any plant is going to be a 5 year wait for a good screen though ... hence the trellis / climber route is often preferred. You could do both of course - trellis for speed, and then once the trees are up remove / ignore the trellis plants.