Replacing Lleylandii screening hedge

h.probert3014qu3FYvVD

Does anyone have any fast growing hedge recommendations? 

We recently moved into a house where along one side of the garden screening us from the neighbours a 20ft high row of lleylandii have been planted. It's been poorly maintained and can't be cropped back, and in a 40ft hedge there are almost 20 trees. 

The best course of action will be to remove and start fresh with something more manageable but the moment we take the trees down we'll be nose to nose with our neighbours bedrooms!

Any suggestions for an evergreen hedge that will pack out fast and can be planted relatively mature? My father suggested pleached limes but i think that will take 3-5 years to get established. 

Absolutely any idea is welcome so i can start bringing some life back into the garden which is currently dried out and acidic

Fairygirl

I'm afraid anything you plant will take 3 to 5 years to establish and grow enough to give reasonable screening. It takes around 2 years [on average] for plants to get their roots down, and then start thriving above ground.
If there's been leylandii there, the ground will need a lot of attention too. Planting into that without improving it first will make it even harder to get anything else to thrive. 

Cherry Laurel is probably among the speediest, once you have reasonable soil, and as long as you have good conditions for it to get going. They need plenty of moisture.  If so, it will grow 2 feet or more each year, once it's happy. Privet is also quite speedy, but again, the same applies. It isn't totally evergreen though - it's really semi evergreen, unless you're in a mild, wetter area.

Planting mature specimens isn't really the answer either, as they take much longer to establish to start with, and it's really important to give them the right care. 

Plantminded

As well as cherry laurel and privet, another evergreen worth considering is Thuja plicata, another conifer but much better behaved than Leylandii.  It will still take time to establish and create a suitable sized screen though.

Hedges can create fierce competition with other plants for water and nutrients as you have noticed, so perhaps a strategically placed large shrub/shrubs or small tree/trees might be an option.

h.probert3014qu3FYvVD

I completely agree with you both about the timeframe to bed in and ground preparation. I had been secretly hoping someone might have the silver bullet idea to resolve. 

The only other idea i'd been toying with was running camouflage screening between the new trees whilst they develop just to maintain the cover but i'm holding that as a last resort. Leaving the current trees for another 20 years isn't going to get us anywhere

Nollie

Photinia Red Robin grows vigorously in poor soil in my part of the world and forms a good hedge relatively quickly. Not to everyone’s taste and I believe it can suffer a little in colder parts of the UK, so depends where you are..

Fairygirl

Yes - it's pretty hideous round here @Nollie. The only ones that look decent are against house walls - south to west facing, so that they get enough moisture, but it's well draining, and more sheltered. They don't like cold, wet conditions.

Escallonia might also be a good choice, as they don't mind a poorer soil, but they like a fairly sunny site. 
There's also Grisellinia, which is popular in many areas. Not something I've grown, so I'm not sure of their needs. 

Plantminded

Escallonia and Griselinia, mentioned by @Fairygirl, grow well here.  As long as you don't get severe winters I would recommend Griselinia, it's evergreen, fast growing and easy to maintain.  You can buy various heights and ages of shrubs from online suppliers, here's one for example:  Griselinia littoralis | Griselinia Hedge | Hedges Direct.  I have two hedges of it, one competing with my neighbour's mature monster laurel and it fares well, even in limited sun!

Nollie

Location, location, location! Can you tell is where you are Mr. P and also how exposed your garden is? Of course you could always plant another leylandii hedge and keep it under control from the start!

h.probert3014qu3FYvVD

We're in Reading so we're on heavy clay, but with 40 years of the lleylandi in the flowerbed the soil in that location is very loose, dry and acidic. The boundary runs north south and gets full sun for most of the day. We're on a hill but the area is pretty sheltered. Some light frost in the winter

h.probert3014qu3FYvVD

My worry with planting more lleylandi is that someone else won't look after it after us and we'll be back in the same mess for someone else in future

Plantminded

If you could possibly post some photos, that would help with recommendations and perhaps inspire other thoughts!