Desperately need some screening advice

[cakeycakeface]

We've just lost a planning decision that went to committee. We now face having two very large double storey buildings being built parallel and directly in front of us. All our public rooms face into them as well as one bedroom. Our home is an old bungalow on an elevated position which means their top floor windows and glazed fronts will have views into our home. We know this because the neighbour already has these views.

We need screening, and really fast, and I expect it will be costly. We don't want a leylandi (sp?) hedge, because we're going to have to look at this everyday and I'm not a fan of them. A mixture of trees and shrubs and hedging. I'm going to have to let go my dream of bedding borders!

We'd need to try plant immediately for a height that can screen the windows. It's going to be hard, these buildings are massive and very ugly.

And yes, we're also thinking of moving, but we'd have to screen anyway to sell the house.

I would really appreciate some advice. I'm feeling very low about it and need to try focus forwards.

Is it privacy for your house or your garden that you need the most?

The slope of the garden will mean you need very tall hedging at the end or retaining walls and soil to build up the level which will be v expensive. The trees or shrubs may also damage the wall as they grow and make it fall on your neighbours side! Pleached trees are lovely but lots of maintenance and £££.

Maybe you could plant a feature tree closer to your own house so you are looking at that not your neighbour?

If it was me, I would do bamboo (p. aureocaulis?? grows to 5m tall and has yellow stems) and/or trellis and climbers (roses if you are concerned about access) on the wall, then a upright tree (silver birch, rowan, something that doesn't block too much light) on the direct line if sight between your windows and theirs, not up against the back wall but more as a feature.

YY to birch and rowan, I have a very ..ahem...challenging climate and they are happy here . If you are high up , your trees will be bare for 6 months of the year or more so you want an elegant shape and birch are lovely .

Id try to get developer to build a 2 m high wall , so 1m high in your side. Then put a fence on top to 2 m. Plant a mixture of :

-a few larger trees ( if you have access for machinery ) eg betula, sorbus , malus , -evergreen shrubs that will grow big but can be cut back like yew, laurel and holly

• deciduous and evergreen shrubs - tough ones

Sorry, that's wasn't clear -

Back row is taller trees that you plant at 3 m tall ( expensive ) and will grow to more than 5m . Need machinery to lift a plant

Second row is smaller ( cheaper ) trees that will also grow tall - you can plant yourselves

Interspersed with evergreen Shrubs that will grow tall but you can cut back easily

In the front are smaller , more decorative shrubs that will grown to about waist / shoulder height maximum - there are plenty depending on your conditions . They are cheap .

So sorry OP for this to happen. I feel for you.

I do have (only slight) privacy issue as my living room looks out to the road and there only grass in between. So the view is car parked outside. I researched a lot and came back with griselinia littoralis green horizon from the shop today.
It is rich green colour, dense glossy leaves, upright growth, eventual spread height 6m x width 3m, but if you plant for example 60cm apart, it will only grow up to to to 150cm and so on. I need max 2m hedge so it felt a perfect. It is also faster growing than some other popular hedging.

The other suggestion I liked on here was bamboo. You good still have your border at the bottom as bamboos are bushier at the top.

I'm planning something along these lines when we need it for the inevitable dormer windows that will ruin our privacy - Imagine a 2D tree shape so trunk to top of fence height then arching 'branches' above that forming a screen - the 2D tree shape. The 'branches' will have thin metal trellis wires on them and I will plant them densely with ivy (Fibrex Nurseries have advised the variety). This way I'll have a dense screen with little pruning and I shouldn't fall foul of any legislation as it'll be feckin art!
So an ivy fedge in the sky iyswim.

Shove that's so kind of you to speak to your DH.

Our house is outwith the guidance distance, and planning have applied guidance as if it is rigid policy.

We are so sure of the privacy and visual amenity impact we asked the planning officer to come around to see for herself. She did (with landscape architect) and although the planner kept her cards close to her chest, the landscape woman was nodding. Especially when the sun came out and lit up the interior of the house opposite.

The houses have floor to ceiling glazing for double storey , and you can see to the back walls. The new houses have even bigger bedroom windows. I've seen their kids dressing in their bedrooms just when walking down my passage (which alarms me with my kids running around starkers sometimes). We've been to their house to see the view back and they can see into all our public rooms.

The planning officer told me at the visit that she had a property much further away from her house than the distance between ours with similar windows and she could see her neighbour naked! At the time I though, "She gets it!" But DH is now saying she was probably saying, 'Well, that's life'.

Planning have applied guidelines to deflect reality, even though the guidelines clearly say they shouldn't be applied rigidly. The developer didn't even try to disagree with us because it is so obviously an impact! He seemed genuinely bothered by what his development would do to us.

We are considering ombudsman but we've had such a fight for three months now that we're exhausted and have no confidence in the system at all anymore.

We think planning are covering up serious historical mistakes. It is a real outrage. I'm out at the moment but will send you a brief outline when I get home. You will not believe it!

In the meanwhile, a digger is already on site. The developer has said we can have the soil. So .... Scrabbling for positives.

Oh you poor thing - I do understand how exhausting something like this can be and why you might not want to fight on. It's such an emotional issue. It sounds like a design problem with the architecture as much as an issue about the placement of these new houses - it's just impractical to have double storey height windows when you are overlooking another property.

I know it's tough right now because you're still dealing with the anger and hurt of the decision, but there WILL be things that can be done with planting that make this much better than it now is, especially if there are 20 metres or so to play with. I'm reassured by that distance because it allows you to do some serious planting along the boundary without completely overshadowing your house. I am sure we can collectively come up with some lovely trees and shrubs that will look terrific and really 'frame' your garden, giving you some privacy!

Sorry if you've already answered this - but what way do the windows face that look out onto the new houses? Do you know what your soil is like? And where (roughly) are you - Scotland or Cornwall, Cardiff or Norwich?

Shove if I could afford it I'd hire a lawyer and take them to court. I totally believe in fighting especially if I believe genuinely an injustice has taken place, but they're digging the ground up already. So even if we won it would cost us a lot and be too late for us. We need that money for screening!

The history

We bought the house knowing consent had been granted (but expired), but the former owner (also the developer) told us the houses would be further away and lower. We also looked at the existing houses already built and thought there was no way they could comply with current policy based on what we knew. We checked policy very carefully and thought it confirmed we were right. We assumed policy must have changed dramatically since then for the others to be there. (This is all an admission of stupidity, really. We bought the house believing we had a strong case to reject them on current policy, and also thinking that if they were approved, they wouldn't be as bad as the ones already there).

Plans were submitted for one plot just before Christmas. It was closer to us and higher than the ones there. It was a nightmare, just before Christmas and all that entails, to research everything. But we write a massive objection letter, with photos, and showing how they didn't comply with either policy or guidance. Our belief was still that policy MUST have changed and we needed to show how.

In January, someone in the community gave us documents on the first three houses that went into the infill area. None of this was available online. We learned that the plans for the first three were rejected because they were NOT in keeping with the area in terms of design, scale, mass, density. It was considered they'd have a disproportionate impact on visual amenity for the area. It was also felt that they would impact on the landscape. In other words, all the arguments we'd made for rejecting these two. The landscape consultant was aggressively opposed as well because a woodland would be removed.

So now we started researching history more deeply. The developer (asset stripping former owner of our house) got a tree survey done. They persuaded planning that they could conceal the houses and reduce all the impacts. Planning went along with this.

159 trees were identified by species and location on the 3 sites. Planning identified 96 of these to be kept and requested that the ones removed for the building needed to be replaced as well. So there should be about 159 trees screening these massive houses. This was a building condition. We found letters to the developer saying that under no circumstances did the council want to hear requests for trees to be removed at a later date. The consent clearly states that these houses "would only be acceptable in a woodland" to protect the area.

DH knows his trees. He took the survey and checked what was there. 83 trees have been removed - 83 out of the 96 that should be there - and no replacement planting for any of the others taken place. There are only 13 trees left. We mapped them in our objection letter.

We spoke to neighbours who describe a 'slash and burn' at the time. But no one knew then the detail of the conditions.

Two more buildings went in next. The planning officer this time claimed they were in keeping with the area and zero comment about screening if the missing trees. Total u-turn despite no change in policy. Some locals think there was something a bit smelly about this. Those have also been built and one of them is the one already impacting on us. He also gave consent for the two plots in front of us, which subsequently expired and have just been renewed.

So, back to current time, when the next application went in for the last plot in front of us, our letter focussed on the history and we showed how even planning had rejected the houses and pointing out they were now totally unscreened and these sites were the most exposed.

We had 30 objections across both applications from about 20 households (only about 30 houses in this part of a small rural village); all three councillors on board, and the community council as well. We did not object to development, we just wanted the scale reduced to be in keeping with the area, which would have addressed our specific issues as well.

Fast forward to the committee meeting on Monday, where the head of planning was present.

The committee got head of planning to acknowledge that these were out if scale with the wider settlement. He admitted most of the village was low-scale.

They got very worked up about the missing trees and wanted them replaced. Planning Head deflected that saying they needed to wait for an investigation to be concluded and taken from there. We expect now they will acknowledge a breach but do nothing retrospectively.

On landscape impact, we'd provided images showing these houses towered over trees and were the only houses in the area to do so. (Our village has two settlements - separated by a small hill and ours is in the north). Planning produced an image from the south settlement showing a community centre and school standing out on the landscape and said they were not the only buildings to stand out. (It still stuns me they compared a house to a school!)

Finally, on sense of place, planning argued this enclave of big houses had their own 'sense of place'. This was actually one of the reasons why they were first rejected years ago, because planning then argued they would create a "suburban enclave" in a rural area. On Monday, this 'difference' was twisted as complying with 'sense of place' in policy.

Planning also argued it would look odd to have two low scale buildings next to these big ones, despite the fact the neighbours on three sides are single storey.

The outcome: one committee member went crazy and said they were ugly and clearly a big mistake. Very very angry about it. Another wanted a site visit but that was refused. Five finally agreed to approve them based on it looking odd to have two bungalows there. It was also commented by the Chair that the developer might appeal because he'd had previous consent. THAT, we believe, was their real concern so they've ignored everything else. When the angry councillor pointed out that had clearly been a mistake by planning, another responded "To stop this now would be like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted"

I am still dumbfounded. We sort of won the argument, but not the case.

Sorry this is so incredibly long. I'm clearly wanting to get it off my chest!

Oh - we had one small victory. One of the plots had a detached garage with study on top on it which we argued had a roof higher than single storey neighbour's. The case officer had said the roof was lower than we claimed. The committee made the head check this in the committee room and we were right. A condition had been applied that it has to be flat roof.

God that's really terrible. I will try to write more in the morning, but I completely understand your frustration here. It's so unfair that the development is already happening, making objections diffiuclt.

I wonder if there is a plan of attack outside of the planning system that doesn't involve you personally spending lots of money on appeals to the ombudsman/judicial review around the trees. Perhaps the Woodland Trust could give you some advice? Also, trees are a highly emotive subject- in Sheffield there are all kinds of objections because a private sector firm who have been contracted to look after the roads is getting rid of loads of street trees because it's cheaper for them to have saplings to look after for the 25 years of the contract. Perhaps, given the strength of local feeling, you could set up a crowd-funded campaign to get justice for the trees (and, by extension, some screening for y'all as residents)? A bit of local opprobrium against the developer wouldn't necessarily hurt

I have just read this with .
I can see why you are utterly stressed out.
Not sure I can add anything to the debate on how/why but maybe a few suggestions.
Sadly, most trees/hedges will take a little time to grow up and fill out, even if you buy 'big' ( though these do not necessarily bed themselves in so well).
A mixture of tall, wide, bushy, feathery would do the trick I think - it doesn't need to be solid to give good screening My boundary is about 30 -35 meters long, and I planted 6 trees, along with interspersed shrubs. But it did take about 5 years before we truly got any true sense of privacy, and now after many years it is totally private, apart from 1 landing window. If you are definitely going to sell and move, then yes to quick growing ( rampant) climbers up trellis and the such, along with tall bamboos, but if there is any chance you end up staying, these are things that you may regret planting in the future.

I understand what you're saying. Right now I'm struggling to come to terms with a long period of grotesque privacy impacts. I'm even considering net curtains (which I really loathe). Not sure if I can ever feel comfortable in my own home again, and mourning the loss of part of my garden to screening.

We currently have a MASSIVE mound of topsoil in our front garden. The digger has been clearing it off the plots and dropping it over our fence for us to use to backfill raising our garden.

This morning when I opened my curtains one of our neighbours (not even the one directly opposite us ) was standing in the landing of his floor to ceiling glazing gawping across while brushing his teeth with an electric toothbrush (much further away than other neighbour and I can see that). He is obviously intensely curious about our plans and totally unbothered by the fact we'd see him. I know some people will not be concerned by this but it really really bothers me.

I am also worried that even if we can screen for privacy (eventually) whether we can ever reduce the visual impact of having overbearing houses right there.

We have a landscape guy coming out in next days or so, and I'll let you know what he says.

It's so emotionally tough to cope with your home changing in such a radical way. It's a kind of loss that you're going through, and it must feel like you have been invaded and violated. Feeling uncomfortable or unsafe in your own home is an absolutely horrible sensation and profoundly upsetting. (I've been there with nightmare neighbours in my last house, and I didn't feel safe anywhere which was exhausting).

I know it's well-nigh impossible, but one thing that can help is to try to divorce the emotional from the practical as much as you can. For most of us, when we're confronting something that is emotionally tough, there can be a feeling that finding a 'practical' solution in some way minimises the emotional shock. That it in some way, dealing with the practical fall-out fails to acknowledge the loss that we're going through. It can feel really invalidating to have someone say 'You can plant here and here and here, and that will really help' because you feel that you're having to do this work out of an injustice, that you shouldn't have to be doing this in the first place and that, in some strange way, moving on to the practical like that is minimising the impact of all this on you. (I even find something perverse in myself at times that says if-I-can't-have-it-how-I-want-it-then-it-might-as-well-be-shit. Fortunately, I have a very patient DH who chivvies me out of this).

We're all different, of course, but sometimes I find compartmentalising a bit can be helpful - and maybe in your case this means dealing with the screening issue in a way that's sort of open-ended?? You might be screening to stay, you might be screening to move. You might put in nets, or blinds that can be raised when your neighbours are out or away. Either way, solving the screening as a practical issue is not the same thing as handling the impact of this emotionally. It doesn't make it any less unjust that the developer/planners have come to this crazy decision. Hopefully it will come to be a meaningful way for you to fight back over time, but right now it's perhaps too soon even to link it up in that way.

for you. I really feel for your situation.

I would go for trellis/wire and something fast growing like russian vine, rambling roses, clematis, wisteria.

No further word of advice, but really, really feel for you.
Instead of net curtains, how about nice venetian blinds that you keep partially closed, the light still comes in but you cannot see what is outside?
I got ones cheaply off ebay (made to measure, wooden, white, thick) and when it is at the right angle it lets the light in, but no one can see inside.

Jumping on this thread, we have a lane at the back which was tree lined but one came down in a storm and the council removed it. Now the house at the back (which is a lot higher than ours) can see straight into our lounge.

I want to add some screening but it's got to go in a raised bed against our back fence. I was wondering about bamboo.

How high do you need it to be, carrot? And what conditions do you have?

First thing to say about any bamboo: most people definitely do NOT want the ones that spread by rhizomes as these are very difficult to control. You want a clump-former.

I'm no bamboo expert, but I am finding in my own garden that height goes with width with these plants. I don't think many varieties get to their full height in UK conditions but even to get to over 10 feet they seem to need quite a bit of space on the ground (think a couple of metres). How wide is your bed/how big is your garden? Do you have the space for it not to look disproportionate? Another issue, as I found out this week, is that the roots of fargesia types are as hard as rock, so dividing them, which you will want to do to keep it in check, is an effort.

I think I would be tempted instead to replant the tree on the other side if you can, or to plant a strategic tree in your own border. Managing the canopy so it doesn't shade too much is a lot easier than managing bamboo!

Hi there, for immediate privacy while you wait for your plants to grow, have a look at "mirrored film for glass". You can stick it on your windows and you'll be able to see them but they won't be able to see you. You can leave it on permanently or take it off when your plants have grown.

About 6 feet and it's heavy, thick soil, not clay, not stones, just soil! (not much help really). It's got to go in a raised up border which is brick built by the previous wheelchair bound owner. Light isn't an issue, it's at the far end of the garden which faces east.

We've planted a mountain ash for now but need something evergreen. The tree that blew down was about 20 feet tall but the council removed it and the two trees next to it :(

I'm trying to think of evergreens that would give you something else in addition to cover Escallonia is one - beautiful scent and flowers as well as nice leaves. Choisya has nicer leaf forms, and a good scent/flower too. Some varieties of Eleagnus pungens have scent as well as wonderfully coloured variegated leaves. If you have the right site, a Daphne is a wonderful fragrance but possibly too slow-growing for your purposes. Of course, there's viburnums - tinus is tough as old boots, burkwoodii is a stalwart and perhaps prettier.

shove - some good recommendations there - I have escallonia and viburnum tinus as screening in my border,
SmallCarrot - a bit more slow growing but possibly a Portuguese Laurel

• Prunus Lusitanica for example. Or Osmanthus , though more a shrub than a tree....

My absolute favourite tree I have for screening is maybe a bit big, and not evergreen though. its Acer Platanoides 'drummondii'

we have virginia creeper and russian vine on a 12ft chainlink fence separating us from a trainline. even in winter the 'strings' are so dense you can't look through.
and it's stunning in october.
just needs a 'fringe' cut every now and then or it would take ovef the garden.

I LOVE a Drummondii acer. It's one of those plants where I remember exactly where and when I first saw it, because I was so blown away! The natural form of it is just wonderful.

Beware of Russian vine unless you are as diligent as greenmarker at cutting it back. It's a beautiful thug!

I find Rowan/mountain ash a bit sparse for screening tbh. I do like birch, and though I know it drops leaves in winter, the branches are very feathery, and still provide some screening, plus garden use is less in winter. It's the sound of the wind in the leaves... So very lovely.
I love Holly for evergreen screening- they can grow incredibly high, and come in lovely colours. Really quite a number of variations. We had very dark green at our last house, though I've seen some lovely paler, silvery ones where we are now.
The photinia red robin, suggested upthread, do look great. And as suggested, they're good at drawing the eye.
Laurel is good and thick. If you planted a few standards, that would start off taller...
Pyracantha (?SP) is good for tops if fences- pretty good screening, grows fairly quickly, even in cruddy soil IME, has lots of thorns to deter intruders. The berries are lovely to look at, but teach your DC never to test them!
Hornbeam is also a quick grower- our hedge is only four years old, but good coverage already, and it keeps its leaves on all winter (browned though) until the new ones bud in spring. They do pleache well too... Cost is putting me off at present.
This must be so stressful for you, I do hope you can get some things in soon, and start to feel better about the situation.

We have a similar situation, but are city-dwellers, and didn't move here for the privacy, IYSWIM. Though our neighbours chopped down all their trees then moaned to me that people could see into their garden!