What should I get to create front garden hedges?

[Cattreesea]

I bought a house last year and I would like to plant a hedge in the front garden this year to add more privacy.

I am on the Kent coast and the front garden gets light/sun for most of the day.

I have pets and visiting foxes that use the gardens.

I am fairly new at gardening so what would you recommend that I buy?

Also would March be a good time for me to plant the new hedge?

Laurel is useless for wildlife and most others are great for wildlife, so I would steer clear of laurel. We inherited one and it’s awful.

Laurel is useless for wildlife and most others are great for wildlife, so I would steer clear of laurel. We inherited one and it’s awful.

I have Portuguese laurel in my back garden (to screen a fence) which is good for wildlife and suits me as it only needs a trim every year:
https://www.gardenersworld.com/plants/prunus-lusitanica/

I need to replace my front hedge. PL would be the easy option - it'll do the job nicely and i know what I'm getting - but I'm tempted to go with beech. I want some screening but also to discourage people walking across my corner plot.

I would recommend lonicera - fast growing, evergreen, hedge size in two to three years but easy to keep to whatever size due to tiny leaves, you can cut it right back and it always grows back well with no bare spots.

I’m on the south coast, have just planted bare root copper beech at the front this winter. Waiting to see if it’s survived as our road is a wind tunnel so there’s been a lot of wind rock followed by heavy rain 😭

I personally prefer a very formal, uniform hedge for a house in town, and a mixed hedgerow somewhere more wild and woolly.

Thank you so much everyone for all the advice and the links!

I definitely want something that is wildlife-friendly.

I will go through all the suggestions :).

Laurel

As a follow on from my previous posts, we have used Hedges Direct for several years now and really rate them.
Plants always arrive well packaged and they offer a genuine plant replacement guarantee should the plants fail for any reason.