Ideas for tall plants for screening between properties without too much horizontal spread

[Deleted User]

You say that @Soot2006  buy money saving doesn't ever mean buying the cheapest.
Money saving is buying good value for money and NOT buying the cheapest there is.

Buy cheap, buy it twice. (or even repeatedly)
Buy quality, it will last. (meaning your hard earned money isn't frittered away on carp)

FatherTireseus

Thanks all for the ideas.  Picking up on a few points:

The fence is around 6 feet high.  The neighbours have always maintained it and when they got someone in to replace a few fence panels about a year ago, I think the guy they used used the cheapest panels he could as one is already looking the worse for wear.  As the neighbour has maintained them I don't really want to attach anything to them as I won't necessarily get any notice if the panels need to be replaced (they never mentioned the planning permission, for example!).

I had thought of some variety of laurel, it seems quite popular in my area so I assume the soil type suits it.  The neighbour on the other side has planted a few to provide a screen between our properties so at least they would match!  

I do like the idea of a large ornamental grass plant - I think it would be ok in the corner of the garden, where there would be a bit more room for it to expand.

I also like the idea of tubs - sounds daft but I had only thought about digging out a border (currently the lawn goes right up to the fence) and planting something in that.  But tubs would make it easier to contain the spread of plants and I could just fill them with compost saving all that digging

As I said in my original post, I've never been much of a gardener.  The house we're in was a new build on an existing plot 20 years ago, and the builder just put turf down on the lawn and that was that.  I never used to have the time to do much in the way of gardening so 20 years later, the turf is still down except now it's more weeds than grass, and squirrels help things along by burying or digging up stuff.

But given we don't really use the garden except for sitting on the patio in the summer, I decided today that I might as well plant stuff around the edges that looks nice (better than a bare fence panel), provides a bit of a screen and hopefully a bit of colour at different times of the year.  Thanks again for all the comments.

kdotdotdotdot

If you're only going up to about 10ft tall and are open to using tubs, would fruit trees suit? In particular, this new style of 'column' trees, which grow about 2ft wide so you can grow them close to each other.  They'll need pruning once a year to keep their shape, but it may be an option?

gwynlas

Large dustbins can be used as pots, we grew a birch and hawthorn in some,.They immediately rise any plants at least 2 feet.