begginner question about trees

hello everyone. I hope you can help me. I live in london in a new house. It is built on the site of an old factory so has a small layer of topsoil and then rubbly ground. I was wondering whether there are any quick growing trees shrubs or big plants that we could plant in our garden that wll survive in that earth. The reason is because we would like to have a border between quite low fences so tree cover would be nice. But are we being optomistic and that really nothing will grow in this type of garden.
Thankyou for your help in advance,
Sarah

 

I presume as the house is new, the gardens are fairly small. If this is the case you would be better to go for large shrubs, rather than trees.
Have a look in your local garden centre and see whats available in the way of large shrubs.

 

thanks pete,i will do that