Nosy neighbours spying on you, double decker bus stops outside your garden, neighbouring children's trampoline interrupting your peace means it's time to get creative when establishing more privacy in your garden.
When consulting with clients, creating privacy in a garden is often a topic that comes up. It’s our job to provide chic design and cost effective landscaping solutions that work well for gardens of all shapes and sizes. Here are just a few garden design ideas for privacy, that we regularly include:
1. Oversized plants in large containers. Very large pots can be bought at different price points and facilitate the planting of rooting trees and shrubs with vegetation of taller heights and bigger foliage sizes. Containers can be cleverly positioned, grouped together, layered using either upturned pots or cut tree trunk sections for staging, and moved about in a garden to build lavishness, colour, texture, and privacy. I've used containers like my grandmother's old galvanised metal rubbish bin, galvanised metal cattle troughs or water storage vats. The more visually interesting and recycled, the better!
2. Planting hedges or trees along your boundaries. Where there is low-level, see-through fencing or walls, boundary lines and gaps can be covered by planting:
Fast growing climbers for added detail and vertical space dressing for confined areas.
Trees of an appropriate mature size for the space allocated
Shrubs that cover lines of sight for dappled shade and protection from nosy people.
Hedges in varying heights and planted in different varieties for visual and seasonal interest.
Once planted, the garden will gain natural character, dense cover and generous screening, which will increase over time as the vegetation establishes.
3. Panels, canopies, pergolas, gazebos and awnings. These come in assorted colours, styles and materials and can be purchased to suit various budgets. If your current garden seating arrangement is over-looked by the neighbours, your privacy can be restored by positioning a pergola, or one of these other structures, overhead. They can provide a safe and secure enclosure, block direct views and offer protection from the weather. Shade sails and wire mounted climbers can add deeper privacy sand sun protection. Dividing the garden into secret spaces for you to enjoy at different times of the day and year provides often much needed garden rooms which encourage friends to explore when they visit.
4. Screens and trellis. Available in a variety of prices, sizes, designs, and materials such as wood, metal, glass, and vinyl; when properly secured they can provide great privacy and a wonderful eye-catching feature for a garden. They should be of the right weight, correctly installed (to prevent them from falling over in windy conditions) and must be in line with height limits stipulated in planning law (i.e. should not be taller than two and a half meters if within two meters of a boundary line). A trellis can be added as a partition with the option of planting an arrangement of climbing plants and flowers to grow up it. Alternatively, it can be placed on top of a wall or fence to beautify a space and cut out your neighbour’s view into your garden, especially if they like to look in and disrupt your privacy!
5. Pleached trees and privacy trees. If you have the space in your garden, why not consider adding privacy greenery? Organic structures of this type can provide privacy as well as adding beauty to your property. Depending on where they are placed, height/root/width restrictions will need careful consideration if near to a boundary or building line.
***If you would like to discuss how our garden design and landscaping services can help improve the privacy of your garden, book us in for a consultation today by giving Zoe a call on 07860283761***
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