garden aficianados

grumbler

dd95 said:

.. we are ideally looking for soimething fully grown but cant really find anything online..

Well, it took me just 30sec to find (and much longer to copy&paste)

Photinia Full Standard Tree

Height Excluding Pot: 3-3.5m (9ft 10-11ft 5)

Plant shape: Full standard

Plant variety: Freshly Potted

Trunk height: 1.6-1.7 m

Trunk girth: 14-16 cm

Pot size: 70 Litres

£693.75 For OVERSIZED Plant Orders delivery will be one charge of £60 for Greater & Outer London or £95 or £145 for selected Further Distance postcodes. To check delivery cost add your plants to basket, then you can type your postcode in our Quick Delivery Price Check.

Don't ask me what "Full standard" shape actually is, but I don't think it's very "wide" like you wanted.

theoretica

dd95 said:

thanks guys so far, any other reccos?

Mahonia x media 

Rosa_Damascena

Silvertabby said:

A couple of hollies? (male and female if you want berries).  Easy to keep to size, as they don't mind being cut back hard.

No, no, no! They get out of control fast, woody and unbudgeable. And definitely not leylandii: https://www.nation.lk/online/leylandii-row-sees-scottish-couple-win-battle-to-have-neighbour-s-trees-chopped-down-159499.html 

WeAreGhosts

Try Portuguese Laurel. Evergreen, and grow quite fast. Easy to shape. Buy the biggest you can afford

adonis

What about bamboo, just make sure it is clump forming.

twopenny

Ceanothus.

I bought one for £3 from Morrisons that grew, espaliered against a fence which works too, to 6ft in 2yrs....however many of theirs are prostrate so go to a garden centre or nursery.

Lots of varieties and different flowers and colour. Get the tough evergreen leaves and a single stem or no more than 3.

I get no mess from fallen leaves, the flowers leave blue under as they fade but quickly go.

Easy to prune. No further maintenance required.

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/446419381803672257/

Rosa_Damascena

^^That is a pretty tree!

OP - can you bear in mind that it is easy to plant a tree, but these things require maintenance and can easily block the light in your own garden as well as the neighbour's, so please think twice unless you are prepared to invest in its upkeep. Trees look lovely but the reality also means damp ground / mossy grass and lots of mosquitoes in the summer.

kdotdotdotdot

adonis said:

What about bamboo, just make sure it is clump forming.

And double, triple-check that it's TRULY clump forming.  A lot of unscrupulous sellers will tell you that it is, and then it turns out not to be.  Just google 'uncontrolled bamboo' to find out the utter misery and damage caused by bamboo that's not clump-forming.  

dd95

thanks all.

Another point we arent sure of.. part of our garden is quite weedy and not the same grass type as the rest. Can we just put top soil over this and then grass seed or would we need to dig it up first? Best example i cna think of is it looks like water cress but obviously isnt..

theoretica

dd95 said:

thanks all.

Another point we arent sure of.. part of our garden is quite weedy and not the same grass type as the rest. Can we just put top soil over this and then grass seed or would we need to dig it up first? Best example i cna think of is it looks like water cress but obviously isnt..

If you have poor soil with bad drainage then trying to paper over it with a little topsoil won't work well. You really need to sort out the top 8 inches or more - and drainage if that is an issue. But if you have an old flowerbed that is weedy because it never got properly seeded then turning it to lawn will be easy.