The Best Plants and Screens To Block Out Your Neighbours
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In this article, Affinity Property Australia explores how you can ensure privacy for your home using plants and screens to block out your neighbours. Learn how increased privacy can boost your property sale price.
Key Takeaways
- Preserving privacy is crucial; using the best plants and screens to block out neighbours enhances property value and appeal.
- Consider upgrading fences or adding privacy screens to obstruct views, while maintaining good garden aesthetics for maximum buyer appeal.
- Bamboo and selected shrubs, such as lilly pilly, serve as effective, fast-growing options for natural barriers.
- Incorporate container or vertical gardens for limited spaces to combine functionality with privacy.
- Using water features or dense hedges can also help block noise from neighbours, adding to outdoor tranquility.
Table of contents
How to secure privacy for your property
In an age of shrinking lot sizes and expanding dwellings, preserving privacy is essential. Shield against intrusive gazes from curious neighbours with premium plants and screens. The best plants and screens to block out neighbours act as a physical barrier to obstruct your home from anyone trying to look inside. They can also help block out sound, protecting your peace and quiet. These tips aren’t just for homeowners – they’re a must-know for property sellers, real estate agents, and landlords too. They offer property privacy solutions that boost your property value and appeal to buyers or renters by addressing privacy concerns head-on.
Upgrade your fence
If low-boundary fences don’t provide enough privacy, consider upgrading to a taller fence.
Check with your local council on the maximum height of fence allowed. In most states, fences under 1.8 metres high won’t require approval, provided they meet planning guidelines regarding styles and materials.
Keep in mind that the general rule is that both neighbours need to contribute equally to the cost of a new fence, unless only one party prefers a higher quality fence than standard. In that case, the neighbour who wants the premium fence needs to fork out the extra cash to cover it. If you want to keep your existing fence but need more privacy, you can install a fence topper.
These panels can be selected to match your fence and add height to the boundary without the cost of building a new one.
Add a privacy screen
When it comes to screening ideas to block out neighbours, sometimes the simplest backyard privacy idea is the best.
A privacy screen is a perfect garden privacy idea if you want to stop onlookers from peering inside your home.
You can use your garden privacy screens to:
- Stop people from looking through your windows
- Divide your backyard
- Keep your utilities (air conditioner, hot water system, junction box) from view
- Provide shade on hot days
If you still want to enjoy the morning sunshine through your window, there are screens with small gaps so light can get through, without sacrificing privacy.
Alternatively, screens are made from wood, plastic, fabric, or some other material that makes them light and easy to move. This way, you can take down the screens and put them back up at your leisure.
These screens can also add shade to your backyard and help keep you cool in the hot Australian summer.
Grow a natural barrier
One of the best cheap ways to block neighbours’ view is through a natural barrier.
A living screen not only prevents neighbours from peering in, but also adds a lush backdrop to your yard. Not only that, but this screening idea adds the benefit of additional shade and a cooler backyard in summer.
Although a dense tree canopy is ideal for blocking views, large trees can take decades to mature, and roots can crack concrete, block pipes, destabilise fences, and sap nutrients and water from garden beds. To provide screening, a hedge or tall shrubs for privacy is your best option. This natural barrier becomes part of the landscape and will naturally increase your property value if you decide to rent or put the house for sale.
Maintenance of lawn and garden
If you decide to sell your property, having the best plants and screens to block out neighbours will be essential for a strong sale price. A garden barrier should complement, not replace, good garden maintenance. Buyers care just as much about curb appeal as they do about the best plants for privacy.
Even the best screening plants Australia offers will hurt the property value if they look scruffy. Keep your grass mowed and privacy trees neat and low-maintenance so your front yard has maximum buyer appeal.
Consider using bamboo
One of the best garden screen ideas is bamboo, which is among the fastest-growing plants. Although bamboo has a bad reputation for invading garden beds and becoming impossible to remove, this is largely due to homeowners selecting the wrong variety for their yards. You can choose a variety that grows to your exact desired height. Small plants purchased from nurseries can provide screening in as little as six months, growing to full height in about two years.
For screening, choose clumping bamboo, as it has a neat upright growth habit and only sends new shoots up from the main growing clump. Avoid running bamboo, which sends out underground shoots and easily spreads into neighbouring yards.
The damage done by invasive bamboo can prevent you from getting the best sale price for your property, requiring expensive property repairs before sale.
Which are the best plants to block out neighbours?
The best plants and best trees to block out neighbours include:
- Slender weavers bamboo (Bambusa textilis ‘Gracilis’)
- Lilly pilly (Syzygium smithii)
- Photinia Red Robin (Photinia x fraseri)
- Pittosporum tenuifolium ‘Silver Song’
- Magnolia grandiflora ‘Little Gem’
With so many options available, there is a best screening plant or tall shrub for privacy to suit every type of house or property. Combine a natural screen and a large fence for maximum privacy. The list of species above includes appropriate plants for covering fences.
A popular Australian native plant for screening is lilly pilly, as it forms a tidy hedge and grows up to two metres per year once established. In fact, there is even a variety called Neighbours-Be-Gone, known for its use as a screening plant.
Fast-growing conifers such as Leyland Cyprus are commonly used to create dense screens and hedges, although at up to 15 metres high, overshadowing can be an issue if trees aren’t pruned regularly.
Using plants to block out noise
Another benefit of having a thick, green garden is that it can actually block out noise!
Plants that grow faster and are effective at blocking noise include:
These privacy plants are evergreen for sound blocking, meaning they stay green and functional for more than one growing season. Noise-blocking plants will increase the sale price of your property for the convenience they offer new buyers.
Water Feature
With any luck, a dense hedge can cut out a lot of the noise associated with loud neighbours, but if the residents next door are particularly annoying, you’ll need to think outside the box.
A water feature will make it easier to deal with noisy neighbours, as even though it might not block out the sound completely, it will provide you with a more peaceful sound to concentrate on.
These water features can be built DIY from scratch, or you can buy more ornate, artistic fountains.
Some homeowners even have outdoor waterfalls that act as both water features and privacy screens! Sound barrier landscaping adds value when you sell your property.
Container Garden
Wondering how to block neighbours’ view if you have a small block, or live in a townhouse or apartment?
Thankfully, garden privacy is not limited to those who have large backyards. Container gardens are portable alternatives to the traditional backyard garden. They come in a nearly endless variety of shapes to suit any living situation, and you can move them around to suit your purpose.
While pots are the most common form of container, you can create a container from almost anything. Creative gardeners have used everything from old boots to picture frames to a simple modern box, complete with wheels, to create their containers.
See more creative examples here for those who used container gardens to block out neighbours’ view.
Vertical Garden
A vertical garden, also called a vertical wall garden, is increasingly popular in urban areas where space is limited.
Rather than being planted in the ground, a vertical garden runs up a wall or is upheld by a free-standing panel. As a result, these gardens do not take up floor space.
A vertical garden is useful if you lack the ground space necessary for containers on your balcony or in your small backyard. Your vertical garden can be as small as a picture frame or large enough to cover an entire wall of your property.
Another benefit of a vertical garden is that it doubles as a barrier to block out your neighbours’ view of your property while remaining green and inviting.
Vegetable Garden
Your garden does not need to just be for show – it can have function as well as form.
The best way to achieve this is through a vegetable garden. This not only allows you to have delicious home-grown fruits and vegetables, but adds colour to your garden as well.
Creating a vertical vegetable garden is your best bet for growing fresh vegetables with limited space. Not only that, but a vertical vegetable garden can act as a barrier to block out neighbours as well.
Shelves or vines can support this vertical vegetable garden hung on mesh supports. Enjoying fresh fruit and vegetables is as easy as plucking them off your green wall.
Using these home screening techniques and privacy plants can increase your property value for selling or renting. Prospective homebuyers and renters are willing to pay a premium for peace of mind, and plants for privacy are a cost-effective way to leverage this for your investment property or house for sale. Use Affinity’s Instant Property Value Estimate Report or request a sales appraisal to find out your property value and start the journey towards getting more from your house, duplex, apartment, townhouse, or unit.