Anything else I can do to help screen my garden?
Minttea
Posts: 16
I’m trying to work out if there is anything I haven’t thought of to help screen my garden a bit more. For context, my garden is about 60 foot long, then there is an access road, and the neighbours’ gardens backing onto that are about 60 foot long as well. In total, there is about 120-130 foot between our houses, but I think the fact that most of the houses backing onto ours have loft extensions and are very slightly elevated on a gradual slope, which adds to the feeling of being quite overlooked.
We moved in around a year ago, when the oak tree in the middle was huge and provided a massive amount of screening and privacy. Unfortunately we had to have it severely pollarded following a massive bough coming down over the summer. The tree on the left is an ash, and whilst it looks nice during the summer and gives a lot of coverage, it’s very slow to come out in leaf so for over half of the year, it’s bare.
I have planted eight thujas along the back fence which should slowly start to fill in some of the gaps. Is there anything else I could plant or do to help soften the view? I’m prepared to be told no, but would welcome anything I may not have thought of!
Posts
Instead I would put something like a trellis screen nearer the house, to make a completely private sitting area. And then something eye catching in the lawn to turn your view away from the houses.
The reality is that I don't think that many people would want to sit up there in a roof space watching you, though I appreciate you feel overlooked.
Sorry about the tree, it is a shame, they never look right or good chopped to hell like that.
Helix has the right idea something screening closer to the house rather than a massive block along the fence boundary that needs to be high in order to screen from the house?
You can still use a lot of your garden without the need to hide it all?
When you are half way or down the bottom no one can see in unless they peek through a knot hole?.
Also a photo in the opposite direction might help.
Nearer a screen is, the shorter it needs to be.
And have fun with the ash seedlings, ours drive me (almost) mad.
Edit . I am sorry I can't find the right posts and links, but there have been similar problems to yours posted before and some ideas and suggestions either here or the Garden design section. A search there may help.
Parts of it look quite shady in the photo so adding more tall trees may not be the best solution.
Personally I don't think it will be too overlooked once the existing trees come into full leaf.
The suggestion from Helix for a trellis screen is a good one, and works much better to create privacy and seclusion. Maybe as part of a pergola with some nice climbers on it.
Our garden faces south east, so we get a lot of sun all day and shade from the Thujas shouldn't really be a problem - the photo in my original post was taken at about 6pm yesterday so still a fair amount of sun even into the evening. We won't let the trees grow too high though - just enough to close the gap between the lowest Ash tree branches and the fence. We got Thujas instead of Leylandii so they wouldn't grow out of control.
The garden is about 60ft wide as well as 60ft long, so it's a nice semi-circle shape, but that doesn't lend itself so well partitioning bits off. But I will definitely have a look into putting a trellis in.
I think I'm less bothered about neighbours seeing me in my garden - it's more than I just don't like looking at loads of windows! And yes, Rubytoo - loft conversions aren't the most attractive! It was such a shame that the oak tree had to be pollarded - this is what it looked like beforehand: