Trees to create privacy?

Mojisola

buckman wrote: »

Hi, we are in UK Nottingham, and the problem is a guest house/come hotel at the bottom of our garden which was always screened off (with Leylandii)

So they are quite large upstairs windows now looking into our garden..

Not too sure of height as not there at the moment.. but would consider anything..Evergreen??

Sorry - meant to get back to you about the trees. It's not an easy choice. You need something quite tall to block the view from the upstairs windows but you don't want to have too wide a spread. I don't know how long the barrier needs to be.

Steer clear of anything that grows too big or you will give yourself a problem for years to come. Most trees that grow tall also have a wide spread. If you don't want to lose part of your garden - and have your neighbour complaining about the branches coming over the fence - choose carefully.

Birches are lovely - the network of branches will still give you quite a lot of privacy in the winter - but there are a lot of different ones which grow to very different heights and spreads. They also "self-prune" and shed twigs quite a lot. We have one and our neighbour hates it.

Privet - Ligustrum ovalifolium - is usually cut back as a hedge but makes quite a nice tree. It's fast-growing and evergreen in most winters. Again, it's not too dense a canopy.

Hazels - Corylus avellana or Corylus maxima - are good tall shrubs. You can prune or thin them as you need to. If you don't have any squirrels around, you'll get a crop of nuts, too.

Depending on how long the boundary is, you could mix the species - birch to block the main view of the window with a mixture of other trees and shrubs either side.

Are those suggestions along the right lines?

£$&*"($£&(

I'd suggest a tall beech hedge. I don't think normal trees will do the job.