Hedge/tree problem with neighbour

Mt61

I would like to put in a laurel hedge where it backs on to our neighbors, their house is higher up & they can see into our garden . just wondering if that is the best thing now. Don’t want any arguments with our neighbours. Any ideas on what is fairly slow growing? Thanks

There must be a name for it - but I'm thinking of the way some people resolve a "lack of privacy" problem in their gardens is to have a row of trees (ordinary type ones - not leylandii or the like) that just have trunks growing up to around fence height and then the branches are trained to go along sideways between each other. I can picture it and there is a house in my area where they've done that.

I'm surprised there aren't more "tree hedges" like that - considering how it seems to be the norm for newbuild houses of recent years to have loads of windows looking down into their back gardens - totally ignoring the British convention that "Back gardens are private".

Just seen another poster has described this - as a "hedge on stilts". We're obviously picturing the same thing.

Leylandii are not particularly good for wildlife but merely take up space and light ,and are hard to keep to the legal size when they constitute a hedge.

Wildlife friendly gardens have to be tended for maximun benefit including benefit to the humans who enjoy the garden.

Cariad Again, Is it palisading, or espalier? I know what you mean by" trees on stilts". where the branches are trained horizontally. I saw photos of a bungalow that had those, on Rightmove. I liked the effect very much.

If I had to move house that needed privacy in the back garden I'd use trellis, as my life expectancy does not favour wait for a tree of any sort to grow tall enough for privacy.

Mt61, Have you considered a long pergola? They are cost effective for screening against a neighbouring higher -up property that really looks down over one's garden . You probably want screening from above rather than at the sides, although it's easy to also add screening to the side of a pergola. With a pergola you get a nice frame for quick growing climbers such as star jasmine.Or if you want evergreen there is canary ivy.

Caleo

Cariad Again, Is it palisading, or espalier? I know what you mean by" trees on stilts". where the branches are trained horizontally. I saw photos of a bungalow that had those, on Rightmove. I liked the effect very much.

If I had to move house that needed privacy in the back garden I'd use trellis, as my life expectancy does not favour wait for a tree of any sort to grow tall enough for privacy.

Espalier = the word I'm looking for.

I get what you mean about protecting your own privacy. One of the reasons I bought my current house is that there's a large back garden behind my back wall and mature trees in it gave me quite a bit of back garden privacy. Unfortunately one of them keeled over dead in the heavy winds we sometimes get here and the owner has kept chopping at and chopping at another one - to feed a logburner fire they got after I moved in I think - grrr!

By the time I was told they tried to gardengrab that garden back along - and had safely been defeated on that by the then owner of my house and the next door neighbour = that got me worried. Add that there are tall houses the other side of their garden and they've nearly all darn well put rooms in their roof and there's now a row of those "slanted into the roof" windows - grrrrrr!!!! They are big enough houses anyway - but they couldnt resist the temptation to add a "room in the roof and blow the neighbours".

A bit worrying all round - so I had 15-20 years estimated life expectancy at that point and have planted a few (fruit) trees in my back garden and got HUGE pots and put a few more trees into them and positioned them alongside the wall.

I think they've got the hint not to hack down some tall trees into a hedge finally along some of that boundary and are just leaving them tall now - you can't exactly miss a neighbour watching with obvious dismay when hedge-cutting is going on and it's obviously seen from their garden that I'm trying to get my back garden privacy back.

Yep....one does think about estimated remaining life expectancy before doing anything major I know. I had my house gutted over a couple of years when I moved here at 60 - because I'm from an area where we do keep our houses pretty modern/do necessary work on them by and large and I have noticed many houses here with similar age people in don't seem to have been touched since the 1970s/1980s. But now I've hit my 70's and have done everything I can to turn my West Wales house into a South-West England house iyswim then I bear in mind how long I estimate I've got left and that I do not want a "longer than average life" - so I base my calculations on an estimated 10 years to go.

Japonica /Quince makes a very successful hedge .
I have one in my front garden . It has beautiful white blossoms and is easily pruned .
I have a rich orange and a soft pink one in the back garden.
I'm careful of the sharp thorns it produces .

Just thinking now - as I "think" everyone in Britain knows:
- back gardens are supposed to be private
- front gardens are not private (unless you've got loadsa money and can buy a HUGE house with huge garden etc etc)

and I get it both ways in my house with succeeding neighbours that came here after I moved in I guess.

The house adjacent to my front garden keeps trying to use their front garden as a "back garden" and I can feel the resentment wafting up that they havent got front garden privacy - and I'm there thinking "It's a front garden - front gardens don't have privacy". So I try and tune it out and think "Why aren't they using their back garden as a 'back garden' rather than wafting resentment up at me that I can clearly see their front garden?". That's an odd one - given that the neighbour there and the one before them bought their house years after I got mine and basically set my garden up. So they could see how that houses front garden is before buying it - ie no privacy at all.

Though the last one tried to deal with that by stealing enough of my front garden that they could put up a fence on my land to block me out. Thankfully they didnt manage it - the Land Registry arent that daft - and they just succeeded in stealing a bit of my garden that gives them no advantage whatsoever...and in fact carries a big disadvantage to them.

Ahh thanks for the advice.
Yes pergola does sound like a good idea, I like the wooden ones, husband likes the more modern metal ones where you can alter the roof slats.
Maybe laurel isn’t such a good idea.
May put in some various evergreens, keep them low so that they dont grow to a ridiculous height.
We get on great with the neighbors & would hate to fall out over a hedge.
Looking back another neighbour to the left, had huge conifers, which blocked our light, grass was boggy because the sun couldn’t dry the grass. They did take them out..I did like them as it acted like a noise barrier, but once out, best thing ever as now our grass is perfectly dry.