Hornbeam in a raised bed?

[greengoblinofgoo]

Hi, does anyone know if there's a good reason not to do this? I need some screening for privacy. Our garden basically has a step down to get into it from the driveway and people can see into part of the garden from the street. Previous owners built a raised bed with plants for screening, but it's not effective. The bed is approx 6ft long and 2-4 ft wide.

Would I be bonkers to consider hornbeam?

TIA.

What about pleached hornbeam.

Hornbeam is very biddable to espalier and pleaching. It would look ace.

If it were pleached we wouldn't get the privacy we need. I'm searching online atm and everything I'm seeing hornbeam in is quite big, whereas ours is a relatively small section where we just need some screening. We were going to put a wooden fence up but I thought greenery would look better.

If I tried it and it looked daft, would it be easy to take out again? (As if I'd ever get round to that)

should be fine, search for bareroot, by it now and get it planted before end of bare root season. Are the beds open bottomed? If you keep them trimmed they should work perfectly.

You plant a double row in that space if necessary, slightly staggered to increase fulness of the block

Thank you, dizhin. Not sure if they're open bottomed and they're right by the back door, so very close to the house. Should I consider this? (Can you tell I'm a novice?)

Hornbeam is lovely and will happily tolerate most conditions (unlike the even nicer beech, which needs free-draining soil). But you will be unscreened for half the year, as the leaves will fall. Why not consider yew? It has reputation for being slow growing, but if you plant small, sturdy bushes, you will have nice all-year cover in no time. Yew also clips beautifully. Good luck!

Hornbeam is similar to beech in that it retains its dead leaves until the new ones bud up, when kept clipped.

have a dig about see how deep down the beds go. If it's more than say 4feet you'd prob have enough as long as u didn't want a 7ft hedge

Thanks to you both. I'm going to dive in and give it a try. What's the worst that could happen?