Sick of dealing with neighbours that can’t mind their own business? Don’t worry, there is an easy and affordable way to block out unwanted eyes from your garden
Nothing will disturb your peaceful afternoon faster than a nosy neighbour poking their head into your garden. Not only is it rude, it’s a massive invasion of your privacy.
Many of us live in houses with neighbours on either side of us. This means that it can be difficult to completely block off our gardens from view. Neighbouring trampolines, windows and tall decks can be a nightmare when you want to sit back and relax in your own space as you’re constantly in view.
Worse still, it’s a notorious source of arguments between neighbours. After all, it’s hard to control how often someone else decides to take a sneaky look at your garden.
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Fortunately, a woman has come up with an ingenious way to stop neighbours from snooping over the fence. You simply need to plant fast-growing and affordable evergreen trees.
In a TikTok video, @iambethmarsdon showed off her cherry laurel pleached trees, which are planted against her garden fence. “This is what they first looked like when we planted them 4 ½ years ago,” she wrote. She showed the trees lined up against her fence in soil beds.
Pleached trees are trees that have been specially trained to have a clear, smooth stem and a screen of branches. They are often shaped into a rectangular or square form, and are typically used for creating privacy screens.
In order to grow them properly, the branches are often secured to a framework. As such, the resulting structure can sometimes be likened to a hedge on stilts.
“We wanted to create privacy from the loft extensions at the back of us,” she explained. “We planted them with a gap in between each tree.”
“We then eventually added more support canes in between the trees to save on the expense of additional trees,” she added. Adding more support canes encourages the tree foliage to grow outwards.
This means you don’t have to plant more trees to create a thicker cover – which is particularly handy if you don’t have a ton of ground space or are working with a tight budget.
She then showed what the trees looked like “after a year”, which showed that they had already created quite dense coverage. She then showed what they looked like today, with the neighbour’s loft completely blocked from view.
The best part? The leaves are evergreen, which means that they stay full and green all year round – offering maximum protection.
In her caption, she added: “They even bloom in spring and give berries in autumn. Total win. If you’re looking for the best trees for privacy, this is your sign!”