Growing hegding along a fence

Hi I want to grow a hedge between my house and the property joined on. We already have a 5 feet wooden fence that is mine but I want to grow a hedge that will give me privacy once fully grown. It needs to cover a distance of about 25 metres. My concerns are is it safe to grow a hedge right from my house with out the worry of the roots affecting our properties and what hedge would I need to plant and how many to give me a private garden?

Keith

 

For number of plants per metre and hedging packs, I would recommend these two sites as a starting point of information:-

Botanica

Buckingham Nurseries

 

I would be tempted to buy decent height bare roots plants (only going to be available for a few more weeks, although you could pot them and re-plant once the ground is prepared if you have to).

A young hedge is going to take a few years to get up to the existing 5' fence, and then to grow higher than it. I planted Beech in Jan 2009, the plants were 120-150cm tall (the height of plant above-ground excluding roots), I last measured them in Nov 2012 and they ranged from 275-400 cm, so that's 4 seasons growth. The tops are still "skinny" at the top, so only the bottom is properly thick.

I would avoid anything that grows really fast, like Leylandii, as you will have to cut it three times a year to keep it under control.

I would also avoid Laurel as its very hard to grow as a narrow hedge (I assume that's important being next to the house).

If you want evergreen then I'm a fan of Thuja plicata atrovirens. Its quick but not mega fast like Leylandii, clips to a really smart hedge - "Poor man's Yew" - and has some ability to recover from being cut back, unlike Leylandii and most other conifers.

If you are on heavy soil plant Hornbeam rather than Beech, which doesn't like wet feet :( Both keep their leaves in Winter, although they do not provide as much privacy as an evergreen hedge.

If you need security as well as privacy (what will happen when the fence rots? will neighbours pets/kids/etc push through the hedge?) get something with thorns. Berberis perhaps (evergreen ones available).

To get a privacy screen ABOVE a fence consider a Pleached Hedge. Basically trees that you grown and train, sideways along wires, and then clip into an aerial hedge - this will allow plants to be grown at the base, to an extent, as te hedge part does not reach right down to the ground. Expensive if you want to buy ready-trained pleached plants, but you would get an instant 12' screen if you can afford it. You can buy "fan trained" young trees for no more than regular ones, they are "ready for pleaching" rather than being a mature instant screen. Takes a while to form a dense pleached hedge from fan-trained tree though. 5 years I would say, but that would be 12' high or so.

I get my bare root Trees and Hedge plants from Ashridge Trees. Always been very pleased with their quality.

Pictures showing how my Beech hedge has grown over the years:
http://kgarden.wordpress.com/projects/replacing-the-front-hedge/4/#Gallery

and my Pleached hedge:
http://kgarden.wordpress.com/projects/pleached-lime-hedge/#Gallery