Marty Wingate - Landscaping for Privacy: Innovative Ways to Turn Your Outdoor Space into a Peaceful Retreat

LANDSCAPING for PRIVACY

Well-designed bamboo fences make attractive barriers, and the material makes it easy for you to be creative with the design.

Innovative Ways to Turn Your Outdoor Space into a Peaceful Retreat

Marty Wingate

Copyright 2011 by Marty Wingate. All rights reserved.

Illustrations by Virginia Hand.

Photo and design credits appear on page 147.

Published in 2011 by Timber Press, Inc.

The Haseltine Building

133 S.W. Second Avenue, Suite 450

Portland, Oregon 97204-3527

www.timberpress.com

2 The Quadrant

135 Salusbury Road

London NW6 6RJ

www.timberpress.co.uk

ISBN-13: 978-1-60469-123-8

Printed in China

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wingate, Marty.

Landscaping for privacy: innovative ways to turn your outdoor space into a peaceful retreat / Marty Wingate.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-60469-123-8

1. Landscape gardening. 2. GardensDesign. I. Title.

SB473.W54 2012

635.9dc22 2011012384

A catalog record for this book is also available from the British Library.

For Leighton

A fence can separate, but adding a buffer planting full of flowers and textures creates a feeling of space without actually taking up too much room.

A green roof provides not just more planting space in a garden, but a way to help capture and filter stormwater before it runs off into the municipal system.

The large climbing rose William Baffin softens the landscape while creating a buffer between the garden and roadway traffic.

Privacy is an overarching need in todays home garden, whether the garden is a small courtyard in a city condo complex, a shallow front yard along a row of houses, or a large space surrounded by a broad suburban lawn. Intrusions abound in modern life, and they assault all our senses. We long to create that one place where such disturbances are kept to a minimum. At home in our gardens, we want to feel protected from the untoward aspects of the modern world.

Living close together can result in community support and friendship, but noisy neighbors, annoying foot traffic cutting across your lawn, and marauding dogs (or children) can be too close for comfort and unwelcome in our personal space. These intrusions can take the form of environmental issues as wellconsider a private seaside garden that evokes a romantic ambiance, until the destructive forces of wind and salt spray damage trees, shrubs, and flowers. Privacy and sanctuary can be difficult to achieve in urban and suburban communities: Whether a property is 5 acres or 3200 square feet, none of us wants to hear the neighbors constantly barking dog or share a view of his (or our own) compost pile when we are trying to enjoy a cookout with friends.

Solutions to these and other problems are provided in this book. Here you will find ideas to soften, or buffer, the influence of poor conditions; to create barriers intrinsic to the garden; and to protect or hide a view by choosing the most appropriate screen. This book offers ideas for creating buffers for visual nuisances, noise, and environmental problems; barriers against wildlife and other trespassers, with information on fences, fence styles, and materials; and screens for hiding the everyday drab within the garden as well as the unwanted views outside the garden. In these pages, you will also find information about hedges, hedge plants, and other materials and how to use them for problem areas in locations from large backyard gardens, to balconies and rooftops.

With good design elements and placement, a personal garden space remains personal, even if it is on a mid-city rooftop.

The design solutions in this book are not quick fixes, but practical, creative, sustainable ideas that will turn your landscape into an enjoyable extension of your home. These ideas for buffers, barriers, and screens are suitable both for city and suburban living. Thoughtful design makes these solutions an integral part of the garden that fits in seamlessly. Buffers that soften the impact of a nuisance can help build a landscape of increasing interest in form and texture. Barriers keep out unwanted views and noise, but they can also improve the visual appeal of a landscape, enhancing its vertical aspects. Screening hedges become more than shrubs planted in a line; they create a green, living wall, incorporating the design elements of sequence and repetition to pull together the landscape.

Out of sight, out of mind, we say; but our choices are broader than any easy way out. An evergreen hedge may provide an easy solution to screen off the view of your neighbors hot tub, but it might not be the best idea for screening out traffic noise. Every spring, an army of arborvitae appears at garden centers everywhere. They provide a quick fix, but they are not necessarily the most appropriate answer to the question, How can I make the ugly view go away? Good design requires commitment. A tall, thin wall of hedge plants can disguise a chain-link fence, but if those plants grow 25 ft. tall and wide, you need to make the commitment to keep the hedge in check.

Some properties allow for sweeping solutions that use giant hedges and solid fences, but others within the close quarters of cities and suburbs have less private space with which to create extensive landscapes. Truth is, a long stretch of tall hedge or a big, blank fence does not suit most modern gardens. Neither is it appropriate for the size of most properties and the style of the homebe it Arts and Crafts or mid-century modern.

Hedges and humans share a long history, and the hedge in a large suburban or city property will continue to be an important element of the landscape, especially when it is used in a way that solves a difficult situation and adds to the artfulness of the garden. Hedges large and small, as well as fences and other design devices, can be used to enclose parts of the garden, to soften harsh effects, to provide privacy, and to disguise unwanted views without turning properties into little cells or eyesores.

This book offers information that can help you identify those aspects of the landscape that are not working for you. You will find creative, individualized solutions that fit your house, garden, and neighborhood style. In these pages, you will discover the best solutions to use as buffers, barriers, and screens for your property, landscape, and garden spaces to make them pleasant places to enjoy in solitude or to share with family and friends. Explore your options carefully, and you can improve your garden, home, and life.