We have new neighbours and it sounds like they are people who enjoy having music on while working in their garden. Other people’s music is annoying if continuous, especially in an otherwise very quiet valley. Once Covid has receded, we are hoping to get to know them as they seem very pleasant. We may be able to mention the problem then BUT it started me thinking about planting for sound deflection as we are about to put some shrubs in that part of the garden anyway.
Has anyone any experience with the use of planting to deaden/deflect sound? It must be possible to some extent because I’ve seen a lot of planting next to motorways.
Any ideas anyone?
Can’t help but tbh I don’t think you can say much without causing an issue as they have the right to listen to music in the garden (as long as it isn’t hugely loud!). One of my lovely neighbours has a propensity for terrible 80s rock - luckily he only does it when is cleaning or working on his car 
And our houses are also probably 150m or so away from each other!
I think it would take a fence to deflect sound - a mound would also work - I think it is unlikely that planting would be dense enough to have an impact.
I realise that @toryroo and I don’t know yet whether this is going to be occasional, intermittent or continuous, so it may well be a non-problem 
However, it did kick off the train of thought about hedges, so I wondered if the vast experience of Survive France members would include someone who’d tried it!
I wondered about fencing @Mat_Davies but there’s quite a deep area in that part of the garden so I thought dense-ish shrubs might help a bit. After all, the Victorians were very keen on their shrubberies but perhaps that was just to give privacy for intimate conversations and the like…
Just thinking about the mound idea 
Something like this…?
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Not Johnny Halliday surely… just play his rendition of Ave Maria - that’ll shut 'em up 
My goodness Mark - it’s years since I’ve seen that
That definitely didn’t improve my opinion of Johnny Halliday… 
They do - but height and thickness are required to make a significant impact = and even then reflections and distance from the hedge do reduce its value… Jf you add a hard surface like a wooden solid fence it makes a lot of difference combined with a hedge
It’s easier to create “pockets” with planting as opposed to a wall between you and the neighbours - wrap plants around a space - bamboo and larger ornamental grasses are good for reduucing noice - they rustle as well which helps a lot more than you’d expect - equally running water tends to help. There’s weird psychology and perception around “sound” - but you definately create a sense of “quiet”- and competing sounds like water are more perception than physical fact when it comes to noise.
London for nearly 30 years …
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Running water definitely helps! (London for 40 years and landscape architect…). You can get outdoor speakers that play running water, or fountains on a loop.
If you can’t do a wall, then a sinuous earth mound planted with something like junipers (evergreen and densely clothed to the ground), with a line of other evergreens a few metres inside it.
Or join in? We have new neighbours with very loud voices who have built a terrace which is above the level of our hedge (grrr 2 metres higher than planning permission). So we can see and hear them. I have taken to joining in if an opportunity arises…shuts them up to have neighbour piping up!
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Thank you very much for the suggestions @chrisell and @JaneJones . As it happens,our next project is a pond the house side of the bush planting and we were planning on having a “stream” going into it. I’d forgotten about the rustling leaves possibility. Excellent ideas 