Buying Semi Mature trees?

[Andehh]

Looking for tree cover to sit just above a 6ft fence and grow to a max height of 4-5m, allowing us to (generally) plant stuff underneath it. Bushier & longer lasting the better to give us some privacy. Local garden centres are expensive & only provide small example, but we are hoping to shave off a few years of waiting for something a bit bigger.

Can anyone recommend any good ways of doing that or Recommended nationwide delivery firms, or anyone Midlands based we can visit?

Finally, any recommended trees that match the requirements above would be appreciated!

[bogie]

We had similar requirements. Ended up with pleached Hornbeam, over a few years can trim them into a hedge as they grow together. They are about £250 each at 10ft tall if you are buying a few of them. Our gardener ordered them in and planted

just google search, there are loads of nurseries in the UK you can order from and will deliver. You will need to plant/support them the first few years, and trim them to style eventually ending up with a floating hedge above your fence

http://www.greenhills-nursery.co.uk/site/index.php...

[Crumpet]

www.majestictrees.co.uk seem to have the biggest that I've found. I've had 6' hedging from Wykeham Mature Plants as well and they were very good. They're all expensive though!

[shedweller]

Barcham trees are pretty good,

I have used them a few times for work - buy the tree you see online is a good service.
Also if you have a local barcham supplier\stockist (usually a trade nursury) they can plant it with supports and watering pipe etc and warranty it..... Mine does a 2yr warranty on supplied and planted large trees

[Renovation]

I have bought 12'+ trees from Earlswood Nurseries.

[C Lee Farquar]

Nicholsons in North Aston do a fair bit of this sort of thing, if you're near North Oxon

[kryten22uk]

Andehh said:

Looking for tree cover to sit just above a 6ft fence and grow to a max height of 4-5m, allowing us to (generally) plant stuff underneath it. Bushier & longer lasting the better to give us some privacy. Local garden centres are expensive & only provide small example, but we are hoping to shave off a few years of waiting for something a bit bigger.

Can anyone recommend any good ways of doing that or Recommended nationwide delivery firms, or anyone Midlands based we can visit?

Finally, any recommended trees that match the requirements above would be appreciated!

We just did this to get extra privacy, over our 6ft garden fence. Instead of trees per-se, we went with large shrubs. They grow to similar heights and provide more variety.

We went for evergreen to ensure continued privacy 12mths of the year.

As for types, any of the Laurel genus are good, we went for Prunus Lusitanica, as it has a nice deep green leaf contrasting with bordeaux red stems. We also chose a Viburnum Tinus, which givens good coverage, and white flowers for aesthetics.
Finally, any of the holly's are good (Ilex genus); we chose Ilex Golden King, which gives an interesting mix of golden and green foliage, and produces red berries. Any of these will easily reach 4m-5m.

We bought ours as semi-mature, around 2m tall. Doing this means they're quite pricey, but you just have to deal with it if you want a more immediate impact. Certain genus are cheaper than others obviously.

Try the RHS plant finder to help you choose.
https://www.rhs.org.uk/plants/search-form

[Shaolin]

Too late now for this year, but the cheapest way to buy big trees is bare-rooted in the winter. May help someone for future reference.

Forget garden centres, you need to find a specialist nursery, they are unlikely to list everything on a website, so find somewhere likely and phone them, they will probably lift large trees on demand rather than having them sitting around. Delivery can be a problem, if you can collect with a trailer it will probably be much cheaper, also bare-rooted trees are much lighter and easier to transport than something in a container with 50kg+ of soil each.