Yew trees in pots!

Hello fellow gardeners

Just arrived from over at the (soon to be extinct) Gardeners World forum and wanted to kick off with a question on a discussion I was having over there! I didn't quite get the chance to follow it through so hoping someone on here might be able to help please.

I need to gradually replace some leylandii hedging with yew trees. As explained previously, I can't simply rip them all out for privacy reasons, and I appreciate patience is required etc when growing. But has anyone had experience of planting yew near to a leylandii and if so, how close, and how well did it do please? What did you do to keep the ground nourished? Also, has anyone had any experience of growing yew in a pot, and if so, how tall were you able to grow it before you had to transplant it etc?

I'm thinking of clearing 3 leylandii trees (each about a metre apart, to make room for a couple of yews. Not sure how close I can have them and how the roots of each behave. Though I've been warned by one poster that anywhere near leylandii is a bad idea. Another forum member suggested keeping them in pots and growing them up a bit more until such a time that I can transplant them into the ground.

I plan to buy at 1.5m high to start....

Any pointers, or direct experience of this, would be much appreciated

Kindest regards

 

Are these old established Leylandii? It would be ideal I think to let a stump grinder loose on the cleared site, but I appreciate this may not be practical, certainly not if you do it in stages.

 

Thank you. Seems like the message I'm getting. Yes, they are established. May I ask, if I used a stump grinder on 3 of the trees, and got them removed, you still think I can't replant in those spots? As the yew would still be too close to the remaining leylandii?

 

Curiously I had a selfseeded yew growing happily next to a Lawsons cypress until December last year when I had the 8 Lawsons cypress removed and the stumps ground out, the yew didnt survive the trampling.

 

If the spot is not shaded out I don't see why not. They may need a bit more/longer care when establishing, and getting the soil (level) right after the stump grinding is perhaps challenging. But it may become quite a long project if you really need continuity of privacy.

 

Oh no! But they were doing okay before they were stood on, yes? Though I suppose they weren't very big anyway so maybe easier to grow at that stage.