The garden fence often draws neighbours together – as friends, as mortal foes or in an uneasy mix of the two. Do you enjoy a Sunday morning blether, wish you could set up a Stalinist watchtower or lament the unmistakable ground elder colonists forcing their way under the hedge?

Whatever your relationship with those next door, the fence defines your patch and usually affords a bit of privacy. No matter how big it is, it won’t be on the same scale as the one Roy Moxham found in India. In The Great Hedge of India (2001), Moxham describes his investigations into a 2304-mile-long hedge that had been constructed during the 1850s by the East India Company to help them collect a hated salt tax. An astonishing 12,000 folk were engaged as guards and customs officers. Our researcher quotes from an annual report lodged by an Indian commissioner of the day: “In its perfect form, the Hedge is a live one from 10 to 14ft in height, and six to 12ft thick composed of closely clipped thorn trees and shrubs … with which a thorny creeper [Guilandina bondue] is constantly intermingled.” It makes even leylandii pale into insignificance.

Seriously though, a boundary affords some privacy, so it usually needs to be a couple of metres tall while not so high that it casts a shadow over the neighbours. It could be a living hedge, providing shelter for nesting birds, or a solid wood or stone edifice acting as a climbing frame for fruit or flowers – or it might be a low post and wire fence for blethering over.

If you and your neighbour are at daggers drawn because one of you loves your 20ft Leyland Cypress and the other can’t stand it, then I can offer no solution. But compromise and a friendly chat ought to sort things out. The monster’s height can’t be reduced as it won’t throw up new growth from old woody stems, so it will need to be felled – a well-deserved fate in my book. Ideally you would grub up the roots and make a completely fresh start.

A living hedge is an attractive option but will take a few years to reach the desired height. In the short term a larch lap fence will do the job. Hawthorns and blackthorns are the most straightforward and traditional candidates; pimpinellifolia roses provide a spectacular bloom in June; and a living fruit hedge takes a lot of beating, provided you and your neighbour can agree on picking rights.

Thorn hedges are easy to maintain – you can lightly trim them till they grow to whatever height and width you want and hold them to that. Nesting birds will have moved off by this time of year, so you now have a perfect moment to cut to shape. I certainly swear by the rose hedge round part of my kitchen garden. Single Cherry, with its delicate pink back and darker inside to the petals, and Mary, Queen of Scots, with its striking red stems, take some beating. The important thing is to keep the foliage firmly under control, as it will become bare and woody in the middle if allowed to spread too widely.

Bear in mind that this type of hedge will develop quite an impressive root system and devour whatever nutrients it finds. There’s absolutely no point in trying to grow greedy camellias or cabbages nearby, so my solution has been to plant a grass path and let the lawnmower nick off any would-be colonial suckers.

Another, less common option is a fruit hedge which has a lot to offer. A wide range of soft fruits – currants, gooseberries, loganberries, thornless brambles and a viciously thorny worcesterberry – take well to cordon and fan training. There’s nothing more satisfying than this kind of pruning, and the bounty for the pudding plate makes the odd wee scratch from the tayberry a price worth paying. For this type of hedge you could negotiate with your neighbour on divvying the spoil or train your own against a wooden structure for exclusive nibble rights.

If you go for the wood, brick or stone option you will have created another “garden bed” – an especially appealing idea if you don’t have too much space. Roses, clematis and honeysuckle will willingly cover the wall and, properly controlled and pruned, make an excellent show. Repeat flowerers, like the new Still Waters clematis, are an added bonus. A fan-trained cherry or plum, suitably protected against marauding jays, will reward you well, while a stouter wall can accommodate planters to intermingle with perennials. By changing the pots when necessary, you can enjoy a colourful fragrant show right through the summer.

This all sounds great, but what about the insidious invaders – the ground elder, the couch or the horsetail? They creep through or under an otherwise perfectly acceptable hedge and invade your herbaceous border. I’m afraid, like removing leylandii roots, it does entail a bit of work to solve the problem. With the dishonourable exception of Japanese knotweed, most perennial weeds will grow and spread in the top 30-40cm (12-16in) of soil, so a vertical membrane sunk to that depth will provide an effective barrier. The stoutest is Terram 3000, designed to keep tree roots at bay: in a recent horsetail eradication trial, I successfully used it to keep each of the trial plots separate from contiguous ones. If you plan to go to all the trouble of inserting a membrane, it pays to invest in a heavy duty permeable one, as a solid barrier can cause drainage problems.

With goodwill and imagination, there’s so much you can do.