Evergreen Trees for Screening
matt_begin22
Posts: 1
in Plants
Hi, I’m looking for suggestions/ideas for trees which we can place at the back of our garden to offer year round screening.
We will be adding a sleeper border at the back and are looking for evergreen trees to fill the space and help provide screening. We did have a bamboo tree which was great, but the roots starting spreading under our neighbours garden so we recently removed.
We are not the most green fingered so any suggestions would be greatly received.
0
Posts
You need to be very careful not to plant anything that grows wide or you will have very little space left. Avoid fast growing plants as they will need constant pruning.
My suggestion is for a slim, slow growing conifer....Thuja occidentalis Smaragd.
My pics show them in a double row to act as a screen
They can be trimmed without dying.
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Rather than trees which would cut down on the amount of space you've got in a really small garden, I would erect trellis panels all along the top of the back fence and possibly your side fences as well if finances permit. It is surprising just how much screening that will provide on its own. Then you could grow an evergreen winter flowering clematis, Clematis cirrhosa 'Freckles' (my favourite) and train it along the trellis. it has lovely bell shaped dangling cream flowers with red freckles on the inside and blooms on and off from say December to February, just when a garden needs some winter cheer. Early bees love it as well. When it's finished, you can just cut off the bits you don't need.
Consider instead a structure of fence posts and trellis panels or tensioned wires along that back fence and partially along the right hand side with some cross bars or wires across the seating area. Then you can plant interesting climbers to give you privacy but with added colour, perfume and even fruits if you go for a grapevine or a kiwi.
You'd need to improve the soil for planting and make your posts at least 2.5 metres high but you can do that within your own garden without breaking rules about fence and hedge heights. Add extra posts to extend and/or strengthen the structure and use wires for the overhead /green supports if your carpentry skills and available timber lengths are not up to much.
"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing." - George Bernard Shaw