I'm horrified, why didn't you just reduce the size of them and maintain at that height ? ? ?
Conifer trees are probably the very best type of tree for wild birds and as long as they're maintained they are the perfect screen.

If the trees had got past a height that would be suitable for a hedge, cutting them off at, say 5 feet would just have left them as an eyesore. You summed it up when you wrote "as long as they're maintained" - I think we can assume that these conifers were beyond that.

Privet is a traditional hedging plant - it's evergreen and produces a dense screen, and doesn't grow as fast as many conifers. Lonicera nitida is another possiblility. Beech hedges are lovely - the bushes are deciduous but keep their brown leaves on all winter, only losing them as the new buds open.

Photinia, Aucuba and laurel are all evergreens with big leaves which are respectively red, variegated green/ gold or plain green. All make attractive hedges.

Can I ask if the roots are still there - you dont say? and how near the boundary are you going to plant as even small trees will grow quite wide?
Where these trees were, the soil will be very depleted you seriously need to put some goodness back before planting anything else.

you can put up 6` x 6` trellis after youveenriched the soil or even taller as the laws are differentv for trellis and grow some nice quick growing climbers up them .

maybe they were the dreaded leylandii and nothing tends to live on them!

May well be Pam

Pamg, birds DO live on them, they're a great tree for them :-/

oh I thought that they shunned leylandii but liked Thuja, sorry

I agree with Louise. My daughter had dreaded leylandii which she needed cut down when she moved into new house and tree surgeon wouldn't touch it until the birds had fledged!

Kept at a decent height and maintained yearly these trees are amazing.

It's the home owners who think that a hedge (of ANY kind) can just be left to do its own thing that have caused the Leylandii's to get their bad name.

Leylandii is a huge tree and was never intend to grow in small gardens and modern housing estates it was the sheer greed of the garden centres etc in the 1970/80s who sold them cheaply in their hundreds, to gullible new gardeners (myself included) as quick fix screening without the warning of just how big they become.

theres a lot of miss-information across the board just to get your money so itsworth reading between the lines and researching anything you buy especialy with a computer at the tip of your fingers . bamboo will be the next plant after the dreaded leylandii . the amount of people who buy the spreading type and just planting because of unscrupuless traders . i keep tropical fish and aquatics shops often sell fish that grow into the hundreds of pounds like nile perch or red tail catfish .

Yes I so agree with you NP, they sell invasive plants too with no warning on the label.My local GC sells Epilobium (great willowherb) as a garden plant and its a weed that spread everywhere.

Louise1, respectfully, please consider the below excerpt.
Also, where i live there are huge amounts of crow's and leylandii. Song birds are non-existent. The crows are pests and leylandii like weeds and it reduces the variety of wildlife in the area.
This is besides the fact that people have to pay large sums of money, regularly, to control the growth of leylandii. Whilst it is easy for someone to tell someone else they should control the growth yearly and leave the tree's as they are, some may not be able to afford this regular expense, especially if the tree's are inherited and they do not have the ability to do it themselves.

Consider the variety of plants that could establish in place of the removed tree's, it can present an even more fortuitous environment for an even larger range of wildlife, than simply leaving the leylandii there. I understand your sentiment but there really is no need to be horrified.

All the best :)

Here's the excerpt....

'Leylandii hedges are one of the greatest menaces to wildlife you could possibly imagine. This is mainly because nesting birds are fooled into thinking of them as safe places in which to build their nests, but the very softness of the foliage means they are absolutley useless as deterrents to predators - magpies (and other corvids), squirrels, etc.
Every year I watch a pair of dunnocks building a nest in a tall Leylandii just opposite; every year the magpies wait until the chicks hatch and then enjoy a tasty meal. I also witnessed a sparrowhawk taking a sparrow in my own garden (yes I still have remnants of Leylandii from an over-enthusiastic previous owner), because when the sparrowhawk pounced this particular sparrow sought refuge in the Leylandii, which actually helped the sparrowhawk take it.
What you need is some kind of thicket as a hedge - beech, hawthorn (and other thorns) - they are decent habitats for nesting, roosting and refuge.'

it happens with everything across the board . reptiles they still sell these pythons that get huge . fish they sell potentialy huge fish and then you get these wolf cross alsations that geneticly can be nearly all wolf none of wich belong in your averadge home . ita a shame dr726 as its never the humans that suffer . its all about the money . leylandii are fine in huge gardens and quite nice in there own right . arnt we talking after the fact as they are already gone . as said thow theres much nicer things you can have in there place in a nice small garden .

I thought it was Leylandii that were the thugs, I remember from agri college that they were and unplanned cross between two nice trees ( chamycyparis I think was one) that resulted in the worst of both which had only one claim to fame which is the speed of growth, I was told that in Germany for example the selling or growing of them is not permitted.

That sounds a really good idea Pam, they cause utter misery for so many home owners with modern sized gardens.

you have to get planning permission here now before you plant it to as it goes pamg x .

didn't know that Np, its about time! at a house we had when first married Drc there was a pair of leylandii either side the garden path that led to the washing line, it was like walking through a carwash after rain and as they were about up to the bedroom windows were a devil of a job to remove.....

lolpam you made me chuckle xx

:0)) Np