Help choosing trees please! I want to plant some mature trees in our rather overlooked garden

amy_hamilton

amy_hamilton

I'm hoping to purchase some mature trees to plant in our garden as want to make it feel cosier. I currently have bay laurel and an olive at the bottom but could move them. I prefer evergreen if possible. Any suggestions regarding best trees/positioning ideas much appreciated! Many thanks, Amy

amancalledgeorge

It's quite a small garden and so much hard landscaping...look into pergolas maybe? What are you doing on that patio that will horrify the neighbours if seen from their upstairs windows? 😂 But seriously, anyone living in a new built development should expect some overlooking due to the way developers cram them in. Anyway, welcome to the forum...and I'll let the members that love garden screening to come through. 

amy_hamilton

Haha thank you amancalledgeorge! It's more a bit more of a softer/ enclosed/cosy feeling we are looking for...I have come to accept that the neighbours will inevitably be able to see our goings on!    

Butterfly66

Hi Amy, it’s hard to tell from your photo how deep the bed is at the back of the garden? If planting a more mature tree you will need a fair amount of room for the rootball. We planted some winter flowering cherries last year which were around 3.5/4m tall and I guess the rootballs were around 90cm across.

Evergreen trees tend to be slower growers than deciduous so larger specimens will be more expensive as they’ve taken longer to grow. The mature height of bay is around 7m so that would certainly give you plenty of evergreen screening eventually.

Barchams and Majestic Trees are specialist nurseries and have good tree finder tools on their website which might help you find something.

amy_hamilton

Thank you both for your helpful
advice. 

The back bed is a retaining wall about a meter away from the fence and has plenty of depth going down and back ... it's a good point you make butterfly66 so will ensure there is plenty of space for a root ball. We planted a mature olive in there a few years ago and it has grown really well...but it's a memorial tree for my mum so don't really want it to get lost amongst all the foliage back there (hence why I've been keeping the bay pruned down). But this means the back bed isn't giving us the enclosed feeling we want. 

But I was thinking of bringing the olive down into the foreground on the left (it's planted in a very large pot with large drainage holes in case we ever wanted to move it), move the bay into the left side/corner of the bed and plant something of interest centrally. I've attached a photo of what I'm thinking. 

I've been looking at a eucalyptus globulus shrub...obviously would need lots of pruning to prevent if from getting too tall - any thoughts? 

amy_hamilton

and I thought perhaps a clumping bamboo in a large barrel to the back right on deck (any suggestions on species?) 

Kili

Hi Amy, just been discussing bamboo at this thread which may be of interest. Just make sure you get the clumping type if you do get bamboo or it will run rampant.