Not every garden lover wants to hide behind high stone walls to be able to enjoy some privacy in their own garden. With a privacy hedge made of flowering bushes, you can not only largely shield prying eyes, but also create hiding and nesting opportunities for birds and useful insects.
Which shrubs are suitable as a privacy screen from neighbors?
Shrubs such as dogwood, weigela, forsythia, lilac, jasmine, elderberry and ranunculus are suitable as natural privacy screens from neighbors. Planted in a delightful mix, they provide a colorful, fragrant hedge and vibrant wildlife throughout the gardening season.
Considerations before planting a shrub hedge
Before planting a shrub hedge, you should be aware that this type of privacy screen usually does not provide 100% privacy, especially between autumn and spring. Although most of our native shrubs delight with colorful foliage and a we alth of flowers between spring and autumn, in winter the bare branches can only partially shield prying eyes from outside the property boundary. It is roughly comparable to the curtain on the window: a shrub hedge with dense growth offers a pleasant feeling of closure and security in the garden even in winter, but the plants are not opaque at this time of year. You should also pay attention to the space required by most shrubs: forsythia and weigelia cannot be trained into a hedge with the narrow dimensions of a cypress or beech hedge. Therefore, be sure to plan a sufficient planting distance from the property line so that you can later cut back the outside of the hedge without any problems.
Ensure a flower-filled garden season with a clever selection of plants
As a rule, shrub hedges are not planted as single varieties, but rather as a colorful mixture of different plant species. The following shrub-like plants are particularly suitable for this purpose:
- Dogwood
- Weigela
- Forsythia
- Lilac
- Jasmine
- elderberry
- Ranunculus
Before planting, look at the flowering times of the individual plants and then coordinate the arrangement of the plants in the hedge. In this way, you can ensure that in later years different parts of the hedge will always be in full bloom in different colors at different times of the year and that their sometimes intoxicating scent will spread throughout the garden.
Don't be too careful when cutting back the privacy hedge from bushes
One advantage of flowering shrubs as privacy screens is the relatively quick and vigorous growth of most shrubs used for this purpose. If young plants with several shoots and a size of 50 to 100 cm are used, they can grow into a natural privacy screen of sufficient height within two or three years. Don't be afraid to prune the shrubs in the first year. If these have already grown well, the plants will make up for a stimulating pruning in the spring with new shoots and stronger branching.
Tip
Privacy hedges made from fast-growing shrubs look particularly natural and elegant when the individual plants are not planted dead straight, but rather along a stretched cord, slightly offset to the left and right.
