Make your garden more welcoming with fences

by Connie Oswald Stofko

Fences are usually used to keep things in, like pets, or to keep things out, like rabbits and deer.

But fences can also make your landscape more welcoming.

Here are two examples from the large Orchard Park landscape of Pat Gurney, who I visited last year during Open Gardens. (See her tips on using annuals and perennials here.)

The photo at the beginning of this article shows a long fence between a sunny area and a shady area. The fence isn’t there to keep the plants apart, nor does it encircle either area to keep pests out. It works as a backdrop and as a way to break up a large area. Instead of feeling as if you’re in a football field, the fence helps separate gardens into a more pleasing, intimate scale. (For more ideas on breaking up a huge landscape, see how gardeners broke up this farm-size landscape into outdoor rooms.)

But you don’t need a huge landscape to use fences. In the photo below, a single section of picket fence provides a focal point for a group of perennials.

Consider using a fence as a trellis, too.