In article ,
An Oasis writes:
|
| I like the clem suggestion or honeysuckle Armandi or P. x fraseri red
| robin all fab potential hedges and very different not like the average
| boring look.

Clematis armandii is a Bad Idea. It will tend to accumulate at the
top and eventually form a mass so heavy that it will have to be
removed. It does not respond well to hard pruning, either.

In warm locations, true bay (Laurus nobilis) is good, but it does
need hand pruning annually. It makes a nicer and more useful hedge
than laurel.

Common laurel is a crazy idea, as it is very hard to keep down to
2m in locations it likes - Portugal laurel would be better.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

Thanks everyone for your valuable advice!

There's plenty of food for thought there and some useful links.

I will put forward some suggestions to our neighbours and the
resident's association to see what they think.

As long as I don't mention leylandii I think we'll be ok!!

The main arguement against anything will be maintenance I should
imagine.

Thanks again!

Best wishes,

Nick

In what sense is beech unsuitable for chalky soil? The chalk hills of SE England are covered in beech woods. In chalky areas, the beech preferentially colonise the chalkiest bits, because they experience greater competition from other species, like oak, away from the chalk. The huge, fast growing beech tree in my parent's garden is growing on 6 inches of soil overlying solid chalk. Having grown up with that, I was then astonished to see beech growing in mixed woods with spruce on acid soils in central Europe.

Utter nonsense. Laurel is a tree and will grow to 10m if you let it, and quite quickly. It will only stay at a defined height if you prune it regularly. We find our laurel hedge (which we inherited, I'd never have planted it myself) needs pruning twice a year. If you only did it once, it is quite capable of doing over a metre in a year, and then the stalks get too thick for the electric hedge clipper.

One advantage of laurel over cypress-type species is that if you do let laurel get overgrown, you can just cut it very hard and it will grow out again to the desired size. Whereas if you cut cypress hard you just get a brown mess that never looks good again - if you ever let it get too big you are stuffed. Another advantage of laurel is that you can maintain it at a small size. Our laurel hedge, which we inherited at 2.5m by 2m, is now 1m by 50cm, and you'd never know it was previously a monster. It is a lot easier to prune than our beech hedge. The hedge clipper does the laurel like a knife through butter.

There are all sorts of evergreen shrubs, not commonly grown for hedging, which are naturally slower, lower growing and could make lovely hedges. But they would take time to get there, and cost more to buy, since not normally sold in bulk for hedging. Things like Osmanthus come to mind. I've seen Sarcococca as a hedge, amazing scent just now. A small true clumping bamboo like Fargesia murieliae "Simba" is an unusual, evergreen, but very expensive hedge, which would be very low maintenance.

wrote in message
...
Dear All,

We live in a flat with a communal garden area.

We would like to plant something that will screen a 40m x 5ft
glavanised steel fence and give us more privacy.

As our experience is limited I hoped you might help by providing some
hedging or plant suggestions.

Our requirements are that:

-It will need to require minimum maintenance, so ideally not grow
outwards too much and not grow much above 2m in height.(So as not to
increase our maintenance charge)

-It's evergreen.

-It's dense.

-Hopefully fast growing.

Our local garden centre recommended bare rooted Laurel planted at 1m
intervals. He said that once it reaches 2m, it should be cut to that
height and will not tend to go above this. How much would it be likely
to bush outwards?

Thanks for your help!

Regards,

Nick

Tie some brushwood screening to it.

Thanks for the suggestion but we did try willow screen and it wasn't
approved of by the neighbours!

Expensive too!

you could also try clump forming bamboo this is evergreen will not grow too
wide and can be cut to size when it gets to the height required and will
thicken up over time to create a great screen, but make sure you get clump
forming or it will spread to fill the garden with it,
i am growing it in tubs as a livng screen that i can move from place to
place,
andy
wrote in message
...
Thanks for the suggestion but we did try willow screen and it wasn't
approved of by the neighbours!

Expensive too!