Hedge for garden privacy

Q

QED

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The end wall of my back garden (in a new town estate) is about 20 ft long and currently has a 6 ft high wall.

The wall is nice and big and does give some privacy, but the entrance road into the estate faces this end of my garden and there is a slight hill down from the main road. This means that when in my garden, I can see all cars entering and they can see my garden despite this 6 ft wall.

There are no neighbours on this side of the garden - there is a small green area the other side of the wall.

I want to make my garden more private but there are a number of problems:

- I don't want to make the wall any higher as it would look like a prison.
- The garden isn't very big so I don't want lots of space taken up by bulky hedges/trees taking up room.
- I don't mind taking time to maintain a suitable hedge but I hear that Leylandi are very difficult to control.
- The soil is not very deep. There is a fairly solid layer of rock about 2 feet below the surface.

Can anyone offer any suggestions? Thanks.
 
Any hedge is going to struggle if there's a solid layer of rock only 2ft down. You might need to build some kind of a raised bed at the foot of the wall. This will give you a greater depth of soil for your hedge but will also raise the height of the hedge automatically.

A decent instant fix solution would be to install a decorative trellis on top of the wall - this would give some privacy while avoiding the starkness of adding further courses of bricks to the wall. You could then grow some fast-growing climbers through the trellis while waiting for your hedge to establish.
 
Good idea about building a raised bed. I hadn't thought of that - I'm very new to this gardening thing!
 
This may not be suitable, I've never grown them myself, but maybe bamboo?
 
I've see the shrub known as Red Robin used as a hedge by a wall with the lower branches trimmed and the tops bushy. It's a nice shrub with red leaves. Check with garden centre.
 
Griselinia are a hedge that you can keep to a small size, they don't grow crazily quick like Leylandi and are a nice bright green with waxy leaves. We have them in our garden and they don't take a lot of work. You can keep them quite narrow too so that they don't take over the garden.
 
bullworth said:
Bamboo is great but doesnt it take donkeys years to grow to any acceptable height ?
Click to expand...

Actually I understood it grows quickly, but I may be wrong. The reason I thought to suggest it is that I saw some in B&Q at the weekend, it was in pots and it was about 5ft high, which would seem like a good starting height if you wanted to grow it as a privacy screen.
 
I definitely agree with you about leylandi.

There is no need to limit yourself to one type of plant along the wall - you could plant a variety of evergreens for interest and just keep them pruned back to the depth you want.

You could also consider planting some thorny shrubs there as a burglar deterrent - e.g. pyrcantha (sp?).

Not sure about bamboo, my brother has some in his garden and while the first 4/5 feet are quite thick, it's very spindly higher up.
 
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