Replacing leylandii & planning permission & third party consultant?

[purpletrees16]

Is there a company you can hire to get a informal opinion on whether your council lets you replace tall leylandii with above 2m high fence? (With trellis - not near road.)

You cannot have a fence above 2m high without pp. if you want to waste money on a planning consultant please do. Leylandii are thugs and kill everything around them. You can get a fence and plant in front of it. We have cherry trees in front of ours and a beech hedge next to it. Much more attractive and wildlife friendly.

We inherited the leyandii - but my husband vetoed any house we viewed that didn’t have an enclosed / grove garden with tall trees. It was a red line. He is against any “growing time” or similar unless you can grow them at the same time and is worried about winter.

Happy to get pp - but scared we’ll lose and then have to lose the trees. We’ve only lived here 9 months. He would then start talking about moving. Neighbours are fine with fence / trelllis so it would be the planning department to object on grounds of not allowing on principle.

Oh dear. Your DH comes across as rather ridiculous on this! Can you not persuade him on the wildlife front? If he’s impatient then you can buy more mature trees. Who really wants to be enclosed by leylandii? There are so many better options.

Have the leylandii been complained about? It’s hardly neighbourly to have them! Can you agree that they are trimmed to a reasonable height? We have a neighbour agreement to keep theirs to 9ft. But your DH is wrong here and unreasonable. Would he really move due to wanting a thugs of trees? All you will have is a view of trunks anyway!

Honestly I would forget about planning permission. Is this a boundary between you and one neighbour? I would erect a standard solid 2m fence and then add screening (those twig things or lattice) on top of the fence to husband's preferred height (what is that?) plant trees although the soil will need conditioning before that. When they are sufficiently grown, remove the trellis/bamboo fence. I think he is madly overthinking it. Even bare branches provide screening and you're not going to be naked sunbathing in winter.

I think those lattice things would count as a fence though - I guess so long as the neighbour was fine then, they would have to complain to the council?

Neighbour smoke outside but only in the evening. Husband is asthmatic so having as much green between them and us is beneficial.

I also dry my laundry outside, so without adequate screen the neighbours are going to be looking at my clothes a lot, including through winter. (no one else I can see seems to do laundry but there’s nothing in the deeds. I get 10-20 years out of most of my clothes on principle so put a lot of effort into careful spot/hand washing and airing.)

No one has complained about the leylandii. Neighbours on both sides are planning massive extensions so are super nice about everything lest I object… it’s a good time.

Leylandii don’t do much for anyone. I think you are being a bit daft. A 2m fence would hide your undies! Set them on a low airer. Grow a beech hedge and be kind to wildlife!

Std 2m fence and buy mature pleached trees.

They will be around £200 each!

Leylandii are dreadful hedging/trees. I have rejected houses to buy because the neighbours have them. Much better to go with a fence. I have got honeysuckle planted up a trellis on one of our 2 metre fences. I would say it adds at least 2 to 3 feet to the height, as well as smelling lovely in the summer. Climbers can add quite a bit of height.
If I look out of an upstairs window on a sunny day I can see people's washing in all the gardens. I am not the slightest bit interested in what is hanging up, as I am sure most people aren't. I think you are being rather over sensitive tbh.

I paid a little under £2000 to get rid of two hideous, shaggy, light excluding leylandii form my late parents’ home. They sucked the life out of at least two gardens and only ever sheltered pigeons.

leylandii are horrible.
We took all ours out- they were shading our house, and completely overshadowing the neighbours' houses at the back- they are totally anti-social. They can't be kept narrow because they go bare.
2m is enough for any fence, unless you're downhill from your neighbours. Normal neighbours don't spend their lives on ladders peering over your fences, why would they?
A2m fence if you must, and then grow something flatish up against it which will cover its ugliness, and stick up a bit to make a softer top edge in time, something like an ornamental ivy, Russian vine (not everyone's taste but it would do the job and fast) or cotoneaster, which also makes food for birds in winter.

We replaces one of the conifer runs with hornbeam. To slow to grow for your DH, but much nicer than conifer.

I don't really understand. You don't need permission to remove the leylandi, and you don't need permission to put a fence up. Why do you need such a high fence?

How high a fence are you wanting?

Yes anything over 2m requires PP. That includes if you add trellis above etc. The only things that won't are living shrubs etc.
That said, the Council won't know unless a neighbour objects (although if they are both having extensions, it is possible that a planning officer may spot a massive fence when visiting their sites). An unauthorised fence may also cause problems when oyu come to sell your property, so at least with trellis, you could just remove that and keep a 2m fence.

I am excited by the planched tree option- didn’t know that was a thing. Think we will do that - the screen even as twigs is more dense and you can buy a 1.8m trunk.

I missed two facts that may add to my case in terms of ridiculousness.

1. we are plagued by hill/land height. Neighbour put up a 2m fence but there’s a slope. You can see their heads.

2. I missed this as it’s identifying but Neighbour has planning permission to build a fancy garden building to run a business that will involve clients going physically to it for classes of 10 or so people per class. Said garden building looks mostly windows as well and without trees will be line of sight to my kitchen. I knew when I bought this but I didn’t know that leylandii are evil. I’ve never experienced the trees and this is my first home. I saw the planning on the searches and stood and was like “oh we have all these tall bush things. Fine.”

They are pleached trees. They join at a height above the trunk. They are very expensive abs you need to maintain them in shape. You can buy mature hedging that’s cheaper. Beech needs trimming once a year.

Pleached trees look like topiary lollipops - they're trained and pruned into shape.

www.hopesgrovenurseries.co.uk/shop/pleached-trees/

Thank you all! Yes autocorrect. Mature hedges would work too. My previous garden experience was from age 11 when I was obsessed with garden tv shows and messed about a bit with cuttings and pond creation in my parents garden. however, as with all things you learn as a kid there are severe holes in my knowledge (like you can buy full trees?!) and this is my first outside space.

While I’m here - Any tips for an area prone to ground elder invasion from next door? I don’t use chemicals due to my dog, but spent 2 whole days digging it out. Jokingly considering planting raspberries and watching them fight but is there another plant that I could use to take up the ground elder’s ecological niche that isn’t a massive problem in itself?

Won't the overlooking windows in the neighbour's place have to have frosted glass? (I appreciate there being a slope complicates it, but normally side windows have to have frosted glass.)

Ground elder is a pain, you have my sympathy. I recall helping my MIL remove if from borders. I'm not sure how low the roots go on them, but maybe you could fit some overlapping, deep vertical slates along the fence in the soil to stop the roots getting through?

It would be a room at the end of a garden so the glass would face their house directly… only with the slope would mean if you turned 10 degrees to not look directly perpendicular your view would be off the kitchen.

Example:

images.app.goo.gl/pBLeLh7bXh1B648r6