Internal screens near the place you like to sit can be far more effective at creating privacy than a high boundary. These needn’t even be solid; in fact, if they are too obtrusive they will make you feel caged. Aim at creating enough enclosure to break up the sight lines of neighbouring houses while still allowing views down the garden and the sunshine to stream in.
One way to do this is with vertical fencing made from driftwood logs and set out in a loose palisade. Plant grasses such as Calamagrostis ‘Karl Foerster’ and annual rudbeckias to wave about in the gaps and it will be a colourful and concealing enclosure well into autumn. The logs cost from £60 each but if that is too expensive, 2in x 5in rough-sawn timbers painted black make an economical alternative. Set them at different heights and they create a modern, chunky effect.
You can do the same with glass — its contemporary look suits those small city courtyards where blocking out stares from neighbouring windows is impossible. Sandblasted glass comes into its own on the south side of a patio as it blocks out nosy neighbours but allows the sunshine through, so you can still enjoy the warmth behind it. It is dynamic, too — opaque and pearly in dry weather but turning clear when covered in raindrops — and if you are one for alfresco parties, the glass glows beautifully when lit up with coloured lights from below.
You can order it from most glaziers in any shape, with holes, patterns or waves cut in the top or even words and pictures sandblasted on the face — Go Glass in Cambridge, for example, is particularly good for fancy sandblasting. The glass is then sent off for toughening, which makes it as hard to break as a car windscreen and safe, too, as it shatters into crystals rather than shards.
A 6mm-thick sheet is resilient to all bumps and blows and it will even take your weight — the only vulnerable parts are the corners, which is why the glass should be held between metal or timber uprights concreted into the ground. Phone round your local glaziers for the best price, but a 3ft x 5ft panel should cost about £170.
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Hedges are the most economical way to corral a large area and in time they will grow as high as you like. But rather than waiting, or if space is at a premium, a large, lollipop-shaped evergreen makes an instant alternative. Full standards, with clear 6ft trunks and heads of foliage 3ft to 4ft across, are ideal for masking individual eyesores or providing privacy if you are looked over from above. Simply plant them so that the canopy covers views you don’t want and the house next door could be a bungalow for all you care.
Architectural Plants in Horsham, West Sussex, sells a fantastic range of large plants, including Elaeagnus x ebbingei, which has dark green leaves with coppery young shoots and carries small, scented white flowers in autumn. It will cope with all manner of exposure, including sea spray, and costs £235 a plant. Architectural Plants also sells the Japanese cloud tree Ligustrum lucidum, for £141. Not to be confused with “cloud pruned” multi-stemmed hollies and privets, it has leaves a shade smaller than a laurel and gets its name from the white clouds of flowers that smother the plant in summer. Neither needs a lot of looking after, just a prune in August to keep the lollipop shape.
Less formal are large bamboos. These make excellent and airy screens, ideal for breaking up lines of ugly buildings. I have one to hide the edge of my neighbour’s house, called Phyllostachys vivax ‘Aureocaulis’, which has yellow culms as thick as your wrist. It is slow to spread, putting its energy into height — mine has topped out at 8m.
Maisonettes and downstairs flats that have gardens are tricky places to hide as upstairs neighbours have a bird’s-eye view. The traditional treatment is to put a pergola next to the house and smother it in vines, either ornamental or fruiting, to block their view. A more modern treatment is to bolt on a triangular canvas sail between your house and a hefty post set in your borders. Sail-makers will sew one to any size, but for gardeners away from the coast (and on a budget), Rawgarden sells plastic shade sails in various squares and triangles, in sand yellow, greens and denim blues. A 5m triangle costs £79.98 online or £89.99 over the phone, including the fixings. It will filter the sun in the same way as an SPF25 sun block, too, so it is good for keeping children free from sunburn.
Natural Driftwood Sculptures, 01202 578 274, www.driftwoodsculptures.co.uk; Go Glass, 01223 211 041, www.goglass.co.uk; Architectural Plants, 01403 891 772, www.architecturalplants.com; Rawgarden, 01371 870 907, www.rawgarden.com