Hi,
I live in the North West of England and was wondering if I could get some advice, my back garden gets a lot of sunshine and we want to enjoy it! I’ve embarked on a garden project which would see the bottom end of the garden with a raised flower bed and decking my post contains a couple of questions around the raised flower bed and its contents and drainage, the raised flower bed is 600mm deep – your advice is much appreciated.

I’ve constructed a raised flower bed and -
i) I want to protect the raised flower bed wood from moisture/soil etc and was thinking of using visqueen but I’m concerned about retaining too much moisture and killing anything I plant! Is it wise to use visqueen with holes in the bottom? Or should I use a semi permeable membrane (but this could still damage the wood??)
Or should I just line the sides with visqueen to protect the wood and allow any moisture to run all the way through?

ii) The reason for the raised bed is to give us some privacy - as you can see from the attached photo we are looked onto from all angels I want to reduce this by planting some tress/bushes - what would be the best option for my raised bed?
I want something that can grow quickly but is manageable (if that’s possible), keeps it’s leaves during winter. I’ve heard horror stories about Leylandii hedges, probably exaggerated but I’m not sure if they are suitable for my application due to the raised flower beds depth? The other options I’ve seen are Griselinia Littoralis Hedge and Lonicera Hedge both have good growth rates – which would be best?

iii) I also would like to purchase pre-grown about 1m-1.5m are there any cheap online stores you could recommend?


Thanks for your time.