Why a Little Screening Makes a Big Difference

Every decent pub garden has its corners — the bench against the wall where regulars put the world to rights, the patch of lawn where a dog sprawls while its owner nurses a pint of bitter. What makes those corners work is enclosure. Not necessarily a fence, but a soft green wall that takes the edge off a neighbouring conservatory, a car park or a busy road, and slows the wind that cuts across an open beer garden on a chilly April evening.

Plants do this job better than timber or trellis, and they do it without plunging the whole garden into shade. The trick is to choose things that grow upwards rather than outwards, and to keep the lower half of a boundary reasonably open so sunlight still reaches the tables, the benches and the flower beds along the wall.

Build the Bones with Evergreens

Start with structure. Evergreen shrubs give you year-round screening when the herbaceous planting has died back and the garden looks its barest. The following all tolerate clipping, cope with British winters and will grow in most soils, from heavy clay to thin chalk.

• Yew (Taxus baccata) — the classic choice. Slow to establish but genuinely dense, happy in shade, and it clips beautifully into a tight formal hedge. All parts are toxic, so keep clippings away from grazing pets.
• Portuguese laurel (Prunus lusitanica) — tidier and denser than common laurel, with glossy leaves and small white flower spikes in early summer. It responds well to hard pruning and makes a solid 2m screen.
• Holly (Ilex aquifolium) — slower growing, but thorny enough to be genuinely impenetrable. Ideal along a boundary where you would rather nobody leaned over.
• Pittosporum tenuifolium — excellent for sheltered city gardens and coastal spots, with dark stems and wavy grey-green leaves. It needs a bit of protection from hard frost.

Plant bare-root hedging between November and February, spacing plants 60–90cm apart for a quick screen. Keep the finished hedge to around 1.8m: high enough to block a sightline from a neighbour's upstairs window, low enough to let the evening sun in over the top.

Tall Grasses: Fast, Flowing and Light-Friendly

If you need screening in a hurry, grasses are the pub gardener's secret weapon. Their foliage is translucent, so they filter a view without blacking it out, and they move in the breeze — which makes a boundary feel alive rather than institutional.

• Miscanthus sinensis cultivars, such as 'Malepartus', reach 1.8m and hold their silvery seed heads well into winter.
• Calamagrostis × acutiflora 'Karl Foerster' is upright and narrow, so it suits a tight border behind a bench, and it stands through the worst of the weather.
• Stipa gigantea gives you tall, airy oat-like heads that catch the low sun — perfect at the back of a seating area.
• Fargesia bamboos are clump-forming rather than running, so they will not invade next door's vegetable patch.

Leave the stems standing over winter for structure and overwintering insects, then cut back hard in late February or early March, just before the new shoots appear. On an exposed site, plant grasses in a block rather than a single row; they support one another and are far less likely to flop across the path after a storm.

Climbers for Scent and Softness

Climbers soften hard boundaries and add the one thing a pub garden can never have too much of: scent. Climbing jasmine is the obvious starting point, but check which one you are buying. Trachelospermum jasminoides, or star jasmine, is evergreen, with glossy leaves and creamy white flowers through July and August; it needs a warm, sheltered south- or west-facing wall. Jasminum officinale, common jasmine, is deciduous and much faster growing, and its perfume on a June evening is worth every inch of space it takes.

Honeysuckle, Lonicera periclymenum, is another good companion — sweetly scented at dusk, attractive to moths, and tolerant of a north-facing wall where jasmine would sulk. Whatever you choose, fit a proper support: galvanised wires tensioned 30–40cm apart, or a sturdy timber trellis fixed clear of the brickwork so air can circulate and the paint can dry. Tie in new growth through the first two summers and the plant will do the rest.

Containers, Borders and the Practical Bits

Plenty of pub gardens are almost entirely paving, which means raised beds and very large containers are your only option. Build timber raised beds at least 45cm deep and line them before filling; a hedge of yew or a clump of bamboo will grow perfectly well in that depth provided you water diligently for the first two summers.

Buy the biggest pots you can reasonably move — 60 litres and upwards — because small containers dry out on a hot Saturday and a stressed plant screens nothing. If you do plant running bamboo, always use a root barrier and check it annually.

Finally, think about the boundary itself. Leave a 60cm gap between a hedge and a neighbour's wall so you can get behind it to trim, and check for overhead cables, drain covers and the pub's own signage before you dig. A well-planted screen is a courtesy to next door as much as a comfort to your customers, and it will pay you back for years with sheltered, sunlit corners where people linger over a pint.