I took down about 10 very large Leylandii when I built my summer house around 3 years ago and replaced the fence. I hated them and they sucked the life out of the surrounding grass, blocked light and had been left to grow out of control meaning pruning them just revealed the trunk and branches which looked ugly.
I want to plant a row of something that is attractive and provides a nice backdrop to the end of the garden, about 10m wide, that I would allow to grow to around 6ft or so. (I live in the North West (Wirral))
What would STW gardening section recommend???

A nice, native mix. Beech, hornbeam, hazel, hawthorn, etc. Looks great most of the year and excellent for wildlife.

Give us a bit more. Evergreen? Thorny? Flowers? Fruit? Soil? Light? Fast-growing? Price?

I’d suggest a couple of Volvos. Or a Scania

Espalier fruit or blossom trees if you want to screen the fence and take minimum space, particularly if south facing.

Lots of options though. What occurs in the old field hedges near you?

The soil has quite a high clay content so draining is not great but other than some moss things seem to grow well and we have a nice mix of plants around the borders that do quite well.
No idea on cost really but hopefully not too expensive.
Thanks @nickjb.

Hawthorn. Whips are cheap, easy to plant and they grow quite quick. I planted about 50 to extend an existing hedge last October and they have doubled in size. The existing hedge is full of small birds, brambles, blackberries, and sloe berries about 5m high and 3m wide.

Thanks @jaminb I will look at that

No idea on cost really but hopefully not too expensive

Cost will depend on size of plant, which just means you have to wait a bit longer for a big hedge. I’ve always gone with whips. They are usually less than a pound each and you can get them mail order. Probably at least 3 years until it’s a hedge though. Around 3 plants per metre staggered to give a thicker hedge

I was going to suggest willow but hedge is probably going to provide more habitat and bonus security.

Again, can be planted from cuttings, I could probably provide them for free as we have a load in my dad’s field needing pruning (if anyone else is interested let me know!). Poor draining clay soil as well, they thrive on it.

I’d suggest a couple of Volvos. Or a Scania

Don’t be daf

Mix of blackthorn, dogwood (shrub), elder, hawthorn, hazel and holly. See what does best, dogwood will grow quite quickly

I had a hawthorn hedge once – never again!  Clipping it was bad, picking up the clippings was even more painful.  Go for something without thorns.

Native mix if you can wait for it to grow, laurel if you want quick results, pyracantha if you want to discourage people hopping over your fence.

If you want a green wall then privet existsfor this. Boring and needs cutting about twice a year but the birds and hedgehogs like living in our at the front (we didn’t plant it if anyone is offering taste judgement).
Beech hedges are similarly dense and darker green or rust res leaves and again birds love the bit we have.
For some interest a mix. Wild roses mixed in will have flowers and hips in autumn, blackthorn has early blossom and sloes for gin, hazel less dense but nuts for squirrels, damson for fruit for gin and crumbles or wild plums (damson and wild plums have evil big thorns for keeping sheep in). Hawthorn for blossom and haws in autumn. We have a jumbled and fairly wild selection of these along our back, some trees some hedge.
All these grow in our clay soil (NE) and at my folks clay soil in S. Wales.
PS hedges = lots of cutting and it makes lawn mowing seem enticing.

We have some sort of privet disease round our way, the more dead stuff you remove the more dies to make up for it. May be something to consider if nobody else has it (ask whoever has been there the longest).

Also agree hawthorn is brutal stuff to maintain, it makes brambles seem tame in comparison.

@squirrelking I’d be interested in cuttings as I have some gaps to fill (also poor draining soil), although I missed what species?

Happy to pay for postage obviously and a donation to your charity of choice for your time.

Not entirely sure on specific species off the top of my head, I should have a note somewhere. May have some twisted hybrid but not sure. I’ll get some pics next time I’m up at the field, pretty sure autumn is the time to cut and plant but I’ll check on that again. (I’ve inherited the job of trying to look after all this so bear with me!)

Edit: just realised my post was a bit vague, we have a ton of willow that can be spared but we do have lots of hedge as well that doubtless needs cut back. Pretty sure there is hawthorn and some dog hip in amongst it, again I’ll take a look and let you know.

Have you just cut them down or have you dragged the stumps out as well? I’d be wanting to improve the soil after having Leylandii on it. When I got rid of mine, the soil was terribly thin and weak afterwards.
I think a nice mixed hawthorn hedge, using a mix of normal hawthorn and Midland hawthorn would be nice. I have a nice mature Midland hawthorn tree in my garden and the pink flowers in May are stunning. Wildlife loves it too. Birds flock to it in autumn for the haws, squirrels love it, and an owl or sparrowhawk murdered a pigeon in mine last week, found bits of it under the tree.
Purple beech does look stunning though, but has a tendency to grow big, I think.
You could run something like honeysuckle or clematis through it if you wanted, for some exra flowers

Copper birch hedge?

Bullace, like hawthorn but few/no thorns and you can still make slow gin.

Have to wait until Oct/Nov to get one though.

Have you just cut them down or have you dragged the stumps out as well? I’d be wanting to improve the soil after having Leylandii on it. When I got rid of mine, the soil was terribly thin and weak afterwards.

Hornbeam, OK with poor soil conditions and pretty bombproof.

Privet is easy to maintain and wildlife friendly, Ilex like Box but more disease
Lonicera like a posh Privet- cuts well . Euonymus , slower growing dense hedge .

Or a mix of the above.

Thanks for all the replies. Really appreciate it. A number of options and from googling it looks like many not too expensive if I choose younger smaller plants and am happy to watch them grow, which I am. They dont need to provide any security or privacy so no rush 🙂

I did similar a couple of years ago. Removed the stumps, erected a vertical barred fence for security, and am growing native hedging to hide the fence
Used a mix of Blackthorn, Hawthorn, Field Maple, Guilder Rose, and Hornbeam for year round coverage. It’s really taking off and starting to look great, hopefully get some fruit next autumn, but I think I may need to reduce it this year to try and thicken it out.

Prunus Lusitanica (Portugal Laurel). Evergreen, grows fairly quickly, likes clay, relatively cheap

A couple of years after we moved in, a field maple self seeded right by our garden wall (which is a 2′ high job). We let it grow. Took about three or four years to make a good hedge.

Would buy again.

The problems a find with Laurel is the leaves don’t compost very well and if you machine cut it you’ll get brown/ yellow damaged leaves- I have a 70 metres x 4 metres hedge in one of my gardens that I hand cut !

Thought of Yew hedge, once up to size easy to keep at the same size.

Mix of blackthorn

No! Blackthorn is the worst possible thing to plant, it’s a devil for sending out suckers underground and they’re almost impossible to get rid of, it’ll eventually colonise the entire garden with a huge thicket of thorny nastiness.

Hawthorn doesn’t do that, and is much more easily controlled. Yes, it’s thorny, but not as bad as Pyrocanthus, which I’ve got on both sides of my front garden. One side has some bits which are dying off, it’s been there for at least fifty years, and there’s holly, privet and some equally thorny plant with small purple leaves, I’ve got a couple of small holly seedlings that had self-seeded, probably from birds, which I’ll plant in the dead spots.

With reference to @LadyGresley above, clipping hawthorn just requires a large sheet of plastic to catch the clippings, and some heavy-duty leather gloves to pick up the clippings and put them into your garden waste bin. I’ve got a pair of red leather welders gloves, and Pyrocanthus thorns can and do go through those, hawthorn isn’t as thorny. I’ve actually got a hawthorn growing at the bottom of my garden, I found it as a tiny seedling growing out of the old railway ballast on the Sustrans route out of Chippenham, managed to get the entire root out, the whole thing about 6” long – it’s now over a metre tall, and will fill a gap formerly occupied by a horrid old elder at the end of a spruce hedge.

There are several more holly plants I found and transplanted, to give a bit more native variety, hopefully the hawthorn will finally flower this year.
There’s also gorse, I’ve got one I dug up from Fyfield Down, near Avebury as a tiny seedling as well, that’s over a metre tall, and flowering.

Welder’s gloves, for all your gardening duties. £2.85!

https://core.eurox.co.uk/shop/cat/hand%20protection/welding%20gloves%20-%20gauntlets/gl016

Oh, good reminder countzero, there’s also a huge holly bush at the end of the garden.

As luck would have it I found a book on hedge planting and maintenance lying about so will have a read and when I find out how to transplant will be happy to send stuff out all roads (Mothers approval pending)

No! Blackthorn is the worst possible thing to plant, it’s a devil for sending out suckers underground…

Yes, it does send suckers out, I’ll concede that 🙂 It needs maintenance but if you keep on top of it it’s not so bad because the suckers are shallow and easily hacked with a spade.
It’ll give you sloes, wildlife likes it and you’ll attract witches (good wand material allegedly), but not one for an entire hedge in the garden