To plant a Leylandii in this garden - or otherwise what?

[slightlybodged]

We've bought a house that is badly in need of some evergreen screening at the bottom of the garden because it's overlooked by a 4 storey block of flats (see photo). The houses to the right have Leylandii, which do the job nicely, though my neighbour is warning me off on the grounds that they suck up a lot of moisture from the garden. We really want something that will reach 12m or so within 10 years. Are there any alternatives?

leylandii will mean nothign else grows in the garden and they require a lot of cutting to keep them manageable.
You will loose a good chunk from you garden too.

There are also some restrictions on planting them, but I don'd know what exactly

?isn't there a law about them being restricted to 7ft if used as a hedge? they do dry the ground & can possibly aid subsidence?

There are lots of lovely trees that will grow that high - I’ll look up later.

Some may not be evergreen but often the structure of the branches can be a visual barrier as you focus on the tree outline and not the background.

What is the tree on the left? That is a nicer shape etc and makes a good screen.

Which direction is the sun? How is it going to effect the shade of the garden? You don't wnat to end up in a dark dank hole under loads of trees.

If you are in the garden. How much of the flats do you actually see/are overlooked by? I wonder if a much lower screen would give you garden privacy (although, not privacy for all your windows maybe)

Speaking from experience, you do not want to shut yourself in with a leylandii. It's a dark green wall of darkness. Boring and dark. And nothing else will grow anywhere near it. Maybe a wild cherry, it grows quickly but not hugely high. Deciduous but that will be ok with all the other trees around. Or a birch. They grow tall without cutting out all the light, and they are nice to look at. A group of three will block out the flats nicely.

The garden is south facing. The tree on the left is lovely, but it's deciduous. The photo was taken in summer, and now it doesn't have any leaves do we are more exposed than before. I really want something evergreen.

Does it matter if the trees are deciduous? How much use are you getting from your garden in the winter?

Also the garden looks long enough that they cannot see through your windows, though not long enough if you are planning to dance around naked without curtains closed and the lights on during a winter's evening.

Here's the winter view, taken today from my kitchen window.

If you have the money and access you can buy mature trees www.barcham.co.uk/buy-big-mature-trees/

We have a similar issue and have plumped for eucalyptus trees as screening, they're not deciduous and the ones we e bought grow reasonably quickly and to a good height.

Bamboo plants might be a quick fix, but you could plant them in pots in the ground as it has a tendency to take over!

Eucalyptus is extremely fast growing and evergreen. Different types, but you can get silvery ones which would look great by a dark evergreen. Monterey pines grow like crazy, but they are huge! You can get other dark conifers which are quick growers, but not so tall as Leylandi.
You could also plant something smaller just this side and left of the shed. Like an arbutus - really pretty evergreen tree. White/pink flowers, small strawberry like fruit. Just as long as soil doesn’t waterlog and isn’t limey.

I would go for a Portuguese laurel.
It would be sun or shade, grows fast at around 3/4 a metre a year and would look good if you grew it to around 5 meters. Easy to prune and responds well to a hard pruning and then you get the added benefit of flowers in the spring and some give edible fruits in the autumn.
It also looks a lot nicer than a cypress.

Lawson's cypress look very like leylandii, but not quite so thuggish, also come in gold leaved forms. A bit more attractive, generally. There are loads of different forms. I suspect the laurels won't be tall enough for you? Eucalyptus would my choice if it had to be evergreen and very tall, at least it's interesting and smells nice.

Laurel. Leylandi are horrible

Never plant leylandi. They are beasts. We have just halved the height of 6 we inherited they were 25 feet high, The tree surgeon says we don't actually know how high they grow but can do 18 ins every year, You would be constantly cutting the garden would be too dark and nothing else would grow

Holly trees

Your neighbour is correct.

We once moved in to a house that had three leylandis beside the lawn. One was still smallish but the other two had become way too tall, were blocking out the light and the grass was dying. We took the big ones down and, after a great effort, got out the roots and the state of the garden improved no end.

On behalf of everyone nearby - please don’t plant leylandii! You’d be better of paying for a mature and less dense tree now, than the upkeep too really. We ‘managed’ our elderly neighbour’s leylandii for a while because we were desperate for the light etc and was no way we could take legal action against her as she was very frail/on state pension etc so we just paid. Cost probably £800+ Over time although the first time was the most expensive as tree surgeons had to come and deal with it in pieces. The fucker. I would go with something more sparse but mature. You don’t need it blocking out every bit of light especially in the winter when your grass and other plants will be desperate for it. Also yy to the sucking up of water.

I have horrendously heavy clay soil in my garden and in the winter it is boggy as hell. I'm tempted to buy loads of leylandii to suck up all the water!

Titsy no I know you’d think that, but if it’s clay soil it’s an imbalance not actually caused by excess water - more like the excess water is a symptom. You can remedy it although it takes a fair bit of time and work, you can add gypsum but I’d didn’t as we only had a small area that was clay and we remedied it with clippings/grass/leaves/homemade compost and it’s righted itself eventually, although not quite as crumbly as over the other side. When we first got here and immediately started planting we realised after a while that roots wouldn’t even take as it was so dense. Planting those fuckers will just mess it all up more

Titsy you could always try a swamp cypress. Very attractive tree, one of the few deciduous conifers.

You could try planting something halfway down the garden. It would reach screening height quicker as it's closer to your viewpoint (assuming viewed from patio area). Just be careful it doesn't shade where you don't want it to. Saying that a patio with no shade on a sunny day can be unpleasant especially if you are eating out there.

But also plant a tree at the bottom. How about a Gingko?