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Plant recommendation pls! Evergreen screening plant / hedge in rain shadow

Qwerty7Qwerty7 Posts: 27
in Problem solving
Hi there - I hope you're all well and had a lovely Xmas.  We live in South London / Kent area and need advice about an evergreen hedge/screening plant to plant in our garden.  This is a dry area as our neighbours have huge leyandi trees near by which create a 'rain shadow' on this flowerbed.  It would be a lovely south facing spot but unfortunately the leyandi trees dry out the soil and block the rain.  Please can you suggest something for us to plant here as an evergreen screening plant / hedge - preferably something fairly quick growing.   Unfortunately we have spent quite a lot on some thujia plicata for this area which haven't been able to tolerate the dry conditions so we need to take them out and replace them with something else.  Thank you so much for any advice (pruning the leyandi is not an option unfortunately!)  Best wishes.

Posts

  • Lizzie27Lizzie27 Posts: 12,494
    I'm afraid there is not much that will tolerate those conditions, I'm struggling to think of any at the moment. If your neighbour's leylandii are in a straight line and more than 3, you could ask them to cut them down to two metres under the existing high hedge legislation but it's not a task lightly undertaken. Sorry.
    North East Somerset - Clay soil over limestone
  • Qwerty7Qwerty7 Posts: 27
    Hi Lizzie27 - thanks for the advice.  I'm not sure what we can do here - previous plants haven't lasted and whist we have given them lots of water to settle in, we cannot commit to watering them as an ongoing situation for years and years to come!  The hedge height legislation is interesting too but I'm reluctant to get into any potential conflict with our neighbours.  best wishes
  • delskidelski Posts: 274
    edited December 2020
    Qwerty7 said:
    The hedge height legislation is interesting too but I'm reluctant to get into any potential conflict with our neighbours. 
    I agree with you that it's awkward and worrysome to think about talking to them as it could be a potential dispute, but it might just be worth asking the question politely. If they refuse then at least you've tried. Unless there's a reason you've said in your original post that "pruning the leylandii is not an option unfortunately"...
    What is it that you're trying to screen with your evergreen? I have a 2.5m leylandii hedge on the boundary of my borders and there are quite a few evergreen shrubs that grow there without too much attention - euonymus, lonicera nitida, photinia.
    Other than that, you could remove all your plants from the bed temporarily and dig out as many conifer roots as possible, cutting them all back to the boundary, then enrich your soil with organic matter and put the plants back in. You need to make your soil as moisture retentive as possible.
    You could also consider installing some kind of slow release watering system. Hosepipe direct from a water butt full of collected rainwater? Sprinkler system on a timer? 2L bottles of water stuck in the soil with some holes in the cap?
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