Help me find the perfect hedge….

[KylieWasHere]

i know nothing about plants and Google has too many options…

we need a hedge for our front garden, a dense one for privacy as we have big bay windows right on the road. It needs to get to a good height in not too many years. So we need a fast growing hedge. We’re in London so clay soil. And it’s a north facing front garden so not much sun at all.

and evergreen!

any suggestions?

Shrubby Honeysuckle (Lonicera) - it will meet all of your requirements, grows really well in my clay soil and isn’t too expensive to buy

I have one Holly Laurel hedge and one normal Laurel hedge I planted myself ( new build ) and both are well behaved .
I will say don't expect them to grow quickly , buy the height you want or the nearest you can afford ! I wish I had as it's take me quite a few years to establish !

Privet?

a dense one for privacy
That doesn't always follow. Sometimes it's enough to disrupt (baffle) the view; you don't need to totally obscure it.
If you already have poor, northern light then you don't want to block it too much.

hedges,direct

Leylandii. That’s why they’re everywhere, you can’t beat them for rapid growth of dense evergreen. There isn't a hedge which will grow rapidly to 6ft, say, and then stop

if you have dense evergreens close to windows, even north facing ones, the room will feel very gloomy.

Thanks all! The hedge isn’t very close to the windows so hopefully it will be ok. But good advice on the light as it’s already quite a gloomy room. I think we’ll prefer gloomy yet private over gloomy and overlooked 🤣

Hornbeam and Laurel are what's found in all the classy 'burbs!

Portuguese laurel grows in most soils including clay and I know of one in part shade,not sure about full shade, that is six foot in five years.It has creamy white flowers in summer too.

I’d vote privet as well.

it grows densely. It is virtually indestructible. It can be cut right back, hacked at and still recover the next year. It is also about the cheapest hedging you can find. Added bonus is because it’s dense it’s great for birds and insects and even mammals and reptiles like frogs and toads and newts.

if you do want something prettier and you could afford it then beech. Although not ever green it’s copper dead leaves stay in place throughout winter only dropping as new leaves emerge in spring. Meaning it’s a beautiful colour during winter months. It grows more slowly so takes a long time to establish dense, thick hedge. But then doesn’t need so many hedge trims a year as privet.

Noooooooooo….please don’t do it

theyre just nasty. They suck moisture for, soil leading to subsidence. They’re are a dead habitat to most wildlife. They look horrible and never grow back well if you have to cut back hard any time (they end up looking like trees from a nuclear winter 🤣🤣), and they son grow so tall you can’t cut them yourself and have to pay a fortune for tree surgeons.

just no

Cutting back hard and having to get a tree surgeon in can be avoided by frequent trims throughout the year. There’s nothing faster that’s evergreen, but fast comes with a price. You can’t have fast and low maintenance. There’s a good reason why it swept over the country so quickly once it was introduced. Gardeners’ Question Time used to recommend it.

I wasn’t recommending it, merely highlighting the impossibility of getting something that grows to hedge height quickly then obligingly stops growing

Privet can look really scruffy without about three cuts a year so a good battery hedge trimmer is a good idea or a recommended gardener failing that.

I wasn’t recommending it, merely highlighting the impossibility of getting something that grows to hedge height quickly then obligingly stops growing
The people I linked to above do something called Instant Hedging. To quote the website, the hedging is "expertly grown and nurtured over several years, the plants have already knitted together giving the appearance of a fully-grown mature hedge that would take up to 5 years to achieve in the garden".
It is, of course, very expensive. Because time is money.

OP's solution may be a temporary measure - such as a fence or screen - whilst the hedge grows to the required height.
Despite the tongue-in-cheek suggestion by MereDintofDevil'sAdvocate , please don't go down the Leylandii route!🙏

I have a few Portuguese laurel in the back garden (purchased this summer) for these same purposes, screening from neighbours. I second what a pp mentioned about buying close to the size you need.
I was at the nursery today to look for something else, evergreen, for the garden and am thinking of a Grisilinia Litoralis.

Forgot to say:

if you get something prickly then it can do double-duty as an anti-burglar device.

You could always go for a mix of plants, rather than a monoculture, so you get different interesting characteristics throughout the year.

What have neighbours got? What works for them?

Photinia red robin could work. The new leaves in spring are red so adds a lovely touch of colour. Fast growing too.

www.rhs.org.uk/plants/94829/photinia-x-fraseri-red-robin/details

I was going to say photinia, too.

Lonicera is best - fast growing, evergreen , and tiny leaves so easy to keep looking smart. You can cut it back as hard as you like and it will come back, it looks just like box hedging but very fast growing- you can acheive a 4 feet high hedge in a couple of years.

Yes lovely when they go red..Great choice.

We have a mixed hedge out back with Hazel, Hornbeam, Blackthorn, Guelder Rose, Weigela, Snowberry and Hawthorn in, which has established itself to 6ft after about 6 years with twice yearly trims.

The Hawthorn and Blackthorn grow the fastest, with Hawthorn being the most user friendly (the Blackthorn is a beast).

Next doors has a mature Hawthorn hedge out front which hosts a large colony of sparrows, always entertaining little birds.

Thanks for all the comments - sorry I got busy with work and forgot to reply! Neighbours have privet and seems to grow well in this area. I do like the look of the Portuguese laurel and will take a look at the photinia… we’ve just put up some frosting on the windows to help us get some privacy until we can grow the hedge…

Scallions can work well too and bees love the flowers mine is still flowering after a a long flowering sumer.

Scallions !!??? No, escallonias 😅😅😅

Hebe? "MIdsummer Beauty" grows fast and has very pretty flowers too.