Building a wall in front of bush

ami-iliffxqmUfW2Y

Hi Can anyone offer advice/suggestions.
We're about to buy a house that's in a flood plain (!) and I want to replace the front garden iron fence with a small brick/stone wall. Thinking red brick would work best as the house is also red brick. Nothing too ostentatious but something to offer a bit more protection from flash flood

My dilemma is that there are some established (conifer?) bushes along the right boundary which offer great privacy from the neighbours but zero protection from any flash floods.
It would be a shame to get rid of the bushes but I don't know if it will be possible to build the brick wall along the boundary whilst they are there?

Looking for suggestions and advice. 

Plantminded

Building a wall next to the hedge will mean disturbing the roots to make the foundations for the wall and then creating a barrier which will prevent light, air and rain reaching the side of the hedge facing the wall.  It would also mean accessing your neighbour's property to maintain the hedge. 

Flood protection is probably your main priority so I would remove the hedge and build your wall on the boundary. (I'm assuming that your flood protection will include floodgates on your driveway, otherwise the wall on the boundary will have limited effect.)

didyw

Personally I would take out the iron fence and put another hedge there.  It doesn't look as if walls would offer much protection from floodwater when you have such an open drive and a hedge will soak up water whereas a wall will merely divert it around itself.  Do you know if the house has actually flooded recently?  

ami-iliffxqmUfW2Y

Yes, the flood protection measures will include flood gates/barriers to protect the other side of the driveway so, we're really only talking about the corner shown in the pic above.

The property flooded 15 years ago but hasn't flooded since. I don't want to leave it to chance though. Just our luck we'll have "the wettest winter on record" as soon as we move in. 

It does sound like we're going to need to remove the hedge - which is a shame. There doesn't appear to be another way around it though

Ergates

Just a thought if you haven’t checked yet. Have you got any quotes for home insurance if the house is in a flood plain? Some friends were going to buy a house in a local village which has a river that regularly floods the adjoining fields. The house was up a steep hill from the water, had never flooded, and unless we have a repeat of Noah and the ark conditions, it never will. However, because the postcode was within an area that floods, they found that many insurers wouldn’t cover them, and the very few that would wanted outrageous premiums. 

Lizzie27

@Ergates, we had the same problem but managed to get insurance at a reasonable cost without too much difficulty. This must have been 3 or 4 years ago so we've stuck with the same company.

ami-iliffxqmUfW2Y

Ergates said:

Have you got any quotes for home insurance if the house is in a flood plain? 

Hi yes, we've had a few quotes online and it's a fair bit more than the £100 a year we pay at our current address but it's worth it in the long run.
The current owners have insurance as does the rest of the street so I'm told.
It's been 15+ years since the house last flooded, which helps.