8 Smart Ways to Screen Your Garden From Prying Neighbors: These Backyard Privacy Ideas Look Fabulous & Are So Effective
If you'd rather spend your summer in the garden out of the gaze of watchful neighbors, these easy garden privacy tricks will make your space feel far more secluded.
Feeling your space is your own is crucial to enjoying time spent in the garden. Backyard privacy screening can play a key role if you'd rather not be seen – or if there are things you yourself would rather not see! As well as being overlooked by neighbors, views to buildings or ugly structures can spoil your outside experience.
Creating privacy in your yard is important, especially if you don't want to feel the outside world is invading your space. From fast-growing hedges, layered climbing plants and clever use of trees to retractable roof covers, ingenious containers and inspired boundary ideas, there are lots of simple design tricks that help make your garden feel more peaceful and secluded.
As well as blocking an unwanted view by raising boundary heights or choosing to plant a privacy screen, shift attention to a more absorbing alternative such as an enticing conversation pit or enchanting water wall.
Article continues belowWhich of our innovative garden privacy ideas is best for your backyard?
1. Raise a Fence-Line With Pleached Trees
Planting pleached trees along fence lines is one of the most elegant ways to screen your garden. As well as being aesthetically pleasing, it has the added bonus of being a great way to block any unwanted views. It also helps to muffle street sounds.
This type of leafy screen looks stylish as soon as it’s planted too. The lateral branches of pleached trees interlace to form a tall, narrow screen. The slender sculptural trunks and trained branches combine to create the effect of a tall hedge on stilts.
When selecting trees for pleaching, it's important to consider how they relate to the rest of the planting scheme in your garden. Choose trees with an upright habit and pliable branches for shaping. Popular choices of tree for pleaching include hornbeam (Carpinus betulus), beech (Fagus sylvatica), and lime (Tilia). You can also pleach fruit trees such as apple, pear and quince.
The 'Lucas' hornbeam is a sleek tree with a vertical accent that's perfect for pleaching as it responds well to pruning. Find the 'Lucas' hornbeam here at Nature Hills.
2. Choose a Unique Decorative Screen
Careful placement of decorative panels is one of the quickest ways to screen your garden and make it feel more secluded. Choose a material like Corten steel with ornamental laser-cut patterns. The stunning sunburst motif pictured here adds a unique design element to this garden.
When positioned correctly, patio privacy screens can give you much-needed seclusion. It's best to opt for a lattice or fretwork style that allows light to filter through so the space doesn't feel too enclosed. Decorative panels can also double up as boundaries or to zone the garden, adding a creative backdrop that will look stunning paired with vibrant planting.
If you're looking for a more affordable way to add privacy without losing the essence of your space try screens made of natural woven textures like bamboo or wicker, or alternatively freestanding panels.
Decorative Privacy Screens
Galvanized steel privacy screen that's perfect for enhancing your outdoor living area. This versatile and elegant screen provides seclusion and adds a contemporary design element.
Made of natural willow branches, this tall, opaque screen adds privacy in outdoor spaces, whether placed at the edge of a garden or used to enclose a porch or patio.
Arrange the six interlocking panels to create a personalized layout for your backyard, patio, or balcony to block unwanted views and make your space more private.
3. Adopt a Layered Planting Approach
The idea of layering a combination of airy plants and materials is one of the cleverest ways to screen your garden. While all are see-through, together they're very effective at blocking a view.
Fast-growing evergreen climbing plants such as Clematis armandii and star jasmine can be used to scramble over a pergola, wall, fence or trellis to soften hard lines and add an extra element to help screen out unwanted views. An added bonus is that evergreen climbers offer year-round cover.
Tall multi-stem trees with slender trunks and airy canopies add another vertical screening element without overshadowing the garden. Elegant ornamental grasses are another great asset when finding ways to screen your garden. They can be used to fill in beds and borders, adding depth to the planting, creating a distinctive and attractive vertical accent, and introducing subtle layers that help garden boundaries fade away.
Clumping ornamental grasses like Calamagrostis 'Karl Foerster' (which grows to over 6 feet) and Giant Miscanthus (over 10 feet) are a great choice if you want to create an informal screen.
Ornamental Grasses for Screening
Adaptable, fast-growing ornamental grass variety that's ideal for adding vertical definition. Best planted in drifts to create an airy screen.
With a strong arching growth habit that gives it a feathery, billowing look this is a strong specimen plant on its own, or very striking in a mixed border.
Tall prairie grass with breathtaking seasonal color. Columnar in form, this has red tinges in summer and reddish bronze with lavender tones in fall.
4. Plant a Fast-Growing Living Screen
Planting a privacy hedge is a great idea if you're looking for affordable ways to screen your garden, especially if you want to attract more wildlife. The good news is you won't have to wait forever if you choose a fast-growing hedge variety. You'll soon be enjoying a lush green screen that blocks out your neighbors and makes your yard feel more secluded.
For fast results, look for hedge cultivars with rapid growth such as American arborvitae (up to 1–2 feet a year), Giant Green arborvitae (up to 3–5 feet a year), English laurel (up to 3 feet a year), and Flame Amor maple (up to 2 feet a year). Do bear in mind that fast growth may mean more trimming, so do check the eventual size of plants to ensure they're suitable.
Alternatively opt for instant hedge screening options that look good within a few hours of installing them. These pre-formed hedge plants are at least five years old and come with 90% of the roots intact, ready for slotting into your garden where they will quickly become established.
5. Sink a Cocooning Conversation Pit
One of the more design-led ways to screen your garden is by introducing an intimate sunken seating area for socializing. Known as a conversation pit, it typically includes features like a fire pit or outdoor coffee table surrounded by built-in seating with cushions.
A modern sunken feature like this is designed with privacy in mind. The idea is to create a comfortable space for gathering that's not overlooked by neighbors. The change of elevation means it will feel especially secluded as any surrounding screening such as trees or fences seem much taller. The seclusion is enhanced with a surrounding of tall delphiniums and lupines.
A simpler way to enhance privacy in a similar fashion is to use raised beds filled with plants as an edging device around a seating area. This will create a similarly immersive quality when you're relaxing.
6. Add Walls to a Pergola
With the addition of thoughtful materials, a pergola can be transformed into an integral design feature that works as a room within your garden. Giving your pergola 'walls' is one of the quickest ways to screen your garden successfully.
For a fast fix, opt for retractable screens that can be adjusted to suit the level of seclusion required. Adding dense vertical planting gives a sense of permanence to your design and lends a 'built-in' quality, especially when greenery is interspersed with bamboo panels or even bricks.
A hedging screen is a good choice for vertical planting. Choose a reliable hedging plant with a close growth habit which can be clipped into a neat architectural shape that doesn't encroach on the space. One of the top choices is privet like this North variety from Nature Hills, with hawthorn and viburnum both viable alternatives.
If the pergola is overlooked by high neighboring windows, a louvred roof that can be closed at the touch of a button is another option to consider.
7. Fill Moveable Planters for Flexible Screening
Lightweight planters on wheels are an inspired idea that lets you move privacy screens around easily according to where you most need them. They let you mask or block specific views to create privacy, in addition to holding the eye and attention within your garden.
Some movable containers come with integral trellises like this Metal Planter Box with Trellis Privacy Screen from Amazon. These are ideal for training easy climbing plants like Coral Star honeysuckle, available from Nature Hills, to give you vertical screening exactly where you want it. This variety has a compact climbing habit reaching 8-12 feet tall, making it a good choice for a vertical garden feature.
Growing graceful ornamental grasses such as Miscanthus sinensis and clump-forming bamboos in a planter add both height and movement, and will grow quickly to form a soft, natural screen.
8. Integrate Sound to Soften External Noise
The stunning blackened ash water wall in this contemporary garden design is a great idea to enliven boundary screening because it introduces an element of sound. Not only does running water help to immerse you in nature, its bubbling, babbling noise makes an effective acoustic barrier against any external din, whether that's traffic or squabbling neighbors. The movement also helps to divert your attention from unsightly views outside your garden by shifting your focus inside it.
The latest beautiful pond ideas can also be used as a way of drowning out the sound of the city and noisy neighbors.
