Looking to sell your home? A well-maintained garden can add up to £2,000 extra to the value of your property. That’s why we have pulled together some truly transforming ideas that will make the biggest impact to your garden. Whether you are looking for privacy in your outdoor space, contrasting colours and textures, or style, these features will be a hit with potential buyers of your home.
1. Living Screens
Living screens are a stunning feature that are perfect for covering up unsightly walls, frames and partitions within and around your outside area. These natural and vibrant features are becoming increasingly popular amongst home owners for their beneficial attributes and stylish look.
Why choose a living screen over a fence?
Not only do living screens add significant value to your house in comparison to fencing, but there are also so many benefits of choosing a living screen for your garden.
The protective wall that a living screen creates has environmental benefits such as protecting you from air and road pollution, and helping wildlife to prosper. They create wind protection through the harsher months and stop intruders. These low maintenance, protective screens are aesthetically pleasing and hide unattractive features hidden behind them.
We have previously supplied Ivy Screens to Channel 4’s Dispatches programme in a world-first experiment on Britain’s toxic air scandal. Read all about it here.
Living Screen Options
Ivy
Ivy screens are an attractive alternative to a fence and will really bring your outdoor space to life! Ivy is our most popular living screen species, grown from 13 plants on galvanised frames to create a much fuller coverage. There are many different varieties of Ivy which all create an idyllic living screen.
Hedera Helix ‘Hibernica’, a dark green, glossy leaf with defined lighter veining and a paler underside when mature.Hedera Helix ‘Woerner’, a classic dark green.
Hedera Helix ‘White Ripple’, a mid-green leaf featuring a soft white margin.Hedera Helix ‘Goldchild’, a lighter green five-pointed leaf with a broad golden yellow margin on the outer edges. Hedera Helix ‘Green Ripple’, a broader mid-green glossy leaf with light green veining and no outer margin.
Green Screens
A different style to ivy living screens, green hedging screens are still a natural and attractive alternative to a fence. Green screens are grown and trained the same way as ivy screens, making these easy to maintain. This environmentally friendly alternative to fencing is a secure option perfect for narrow spaces and covering unattractive features around your home.
Living screens are cost-effective in the long run compared with the financial burdens of mending damaged or rotting, old fencing. They are an attractive feature that offers instant impact around your home, a sure and reliable choice.
69% of estate agents believe the garden is either important or very important in both the property value and in the speed of sale. 55% believe it shortened the selling time by anywhere from one to several weeks.
2. Pleached Trees
Known as ‘hedges on stilts’, pleached trees have trained foliage that is developed into a narrow, dense screen. The tree has been grown along a cane structure to keep the foliage neat and narrow. This striking screen of foliage sits on a slim and sleek tree stem, hence the ‘hedge on stilts’ resemblance.
Pleached trees create a great privacy screen and shade area, whilst also hide unsightly views such as buildings. Another great thing about pleached trees is that because they are tall, they can be grown above existing walls or fences.
We offer a range of pleached trees to fit your specific needs. If you are looking to plant in the summer months, potted fresh pleached are available all year round and are a secure start to your pleached tree’s growth. If you are planting in the autumn and winter months, fresh pleached or mature pleached trees are both available. Fresh pleached trees are the more cost-effective choice as the trees are still growing into stunning mature trees. Mature pleached trees are fully grown trees that will offer an instant impact in your garden with their striking appearance.
A slightly different style that we offer in our range of pleached trees is Espalier. This style differs as the tree is trained across longer and wider spread canes allowing sunlight to pour in and around the flowering foliage. What’s great about espalier is that it provides shade and privacy around the garden whilst also preserving space and inviting wildlife to visit. The fragrant fruits that are often grown on espalier add a new dimension to your garden. Espalier is available as a cost-effective fresh pleached or as a fully mature tree, offering an instantly striking garden appeal.
3. Topiary
Dating back to ancient Egypt, topiary is a formal gardening style that creates artistic shapes from dense foliage. Used in both traditional and modern styled gardens, topiary is still a very popular gardening feature. There are a variety of shapes and styles that are executed in this style of pruning, creating stunning focal points in the garden that create contrasting textures in an outdoor space.
With topiary, symmetry and attention to detail are crucial to the finishing aesthetic of the shape. Topiary is often placed side by side at the front door, start to a pathway or as a ‘door’ opening to a new outside space. At Hedges Direct we aim to pair topiary to the best of our ability to ensure your garden is looking as artistically striking as imagined.
Our topiary range is available as mature plants ready to lift and re-create your outside space. The maintenance and care required to make these fabulous styles is extensive, with re-potting, trimming and weeding. Some of our Yew and larger Box topiary pieces are 10 years old.
Topiary Styles
Topiary balls are typically smaller than other topiary and grown from Box plants, creating a very formal look from the tightly pruned small leaves. As modern garden design is developing, a variety of species are now being used to experiment with topiary styles. Other species that have been experimented with for topiary balls are Japanese Holly, English Yew and Portuguese Laurel.
Topiary standards, also known as topiary lollipops from the aesthetic they produce, are a popular choice of topiary. Topiary standards separate themselves from other topiary styles due to the long sleek stem that the pruned foliage rests on. The lollipop style creates a fun and energetic look, especially when grown from a larger leaved, more relaxed plant such as Photinia Red Robin.
Topiary spirals add a classy style to your garden that boasts elegance. Due to the formality and preciseness of the pruning and shaping of this style, the smaller leaved plant Box is most commonly used to grow this shape. Topiary spirals are renowned for the impressive appearance of their shape paired well with vibrant evergreen foliage. Available in an array of sizes, topiary spirals are a sure choice for a show stopper look.
Topiary Cubes are the perfect style to add low level movement throughout your garden, especially along pathways. They are usually grown using Box plants to ensure that the tightly pruned corners of the cube shape have the biggest in your outside space. Topiary cubes are a less traditional shape that adds structure through its solid lines against other more relaxed garden features.
Interested in any of these transforming garden features? Call our friendly team on 01257 788244 for more information and advice with your order.
