Trees for screening in clay soil? Help Please!!

[sundaymorningfeeling]

I am hoping some Mumsnetters are eminently more knowledgable than me please and can help.

We bought a house last year and have embarked on a rather large land restructuring project in the garden.

Once it's done we will need to plant some trees to screen us from a house that directly overlooks us.

What trees would be evergreen please and likely to grow fast-ish in what appears to be quite clay like ground. If it matters, they will be at the top of a slight slope so need to grow ok on a bit of a slope.

We were thinking to buy them around 5 foot but I'm not sure if we should buy bigger. There is space for 3 (I think) that need to do most of the screening but should also be room for 3 or 4 others to the side. Ideally I would really like 3/4 different types so it doesn't look too uniform and bland.

I would love some advice as when I google it I get overwhelmed. Having spent far more than originally planned on getting the hard landscaping done,I am really worried that we will make a mistake with the choice of trees (and I admit we moved from a lovely garden that we inherited from the previous owners of our old house that had a beautiful selection of trees).

We have a 5 and 8 year old and they still talk about the trees in our old garden so I want to create something that also feels nice to them as well as providing desperately needed screening from the house that overlooks us from slightly higher land.

Any ideas, suggestions or even photos are very gratefully received!

Do check the high hedge legislation and your neighbour's likely reaction. Two or more evergreen trees side by side is a hedge and comes under the limitations over height.

Cherry laurel and holly both do OK on clay, although holly is slow to get started. You could also look at Aucuba ("spotty laurel").

Are you trying to screen the garden or your house? If the latter, it is sometime more effective to plant something closer - firstly, it doesn't need to be as big, secondly it draws the eye forward and away from what you're trying to screen.

Thank you both.

I will check those out.

The neighbours are happy as they e just bought the house and aren't too keen on seeing us either! Their front windows face into our back garden.

I'm hoping for trees as otherwise we will just have very bland grass. The neighbours house is built on land that is higher than ours so trees will need to eventually be quite big anyway.

I love Holly and we had one in our old garden so one of those would be good. Cherry laurel came up a lot on my google searching but I will check out the other one too.

Just very nervous that we might get it wrong!