Think outside the fence when it comes to marking your territory.
Some friends of mine are cogitating over their garden and chewing ideas over at a fierce rate. Most of their patch is at the front and side of the house, a great wedge of grass. The verdant covering is perfect for their growing family, providing the best surface in the world for running, jumping and rolling. The swathe of green is a little threadbare here and there, but an afternoon's weeding and reseeding should sort that out. They're lucky to have such a child-friendly surface.
What's exercising their minds is the long garden boundary at the front. The low wall, about half a metre high, is far too tempting for little people to clamber over, and meander into the road.
"Plant a hedge," I advise breezily, with the easy confidence and authority that comes from it not being my garden. It is pointed out, with admirable restraint, that by the time the hedge grows to any decent height, the growing family will also have grown - and will have reached the age of reason, which should prevent them from suddenly bolting onto the road. My friends may have a point there.
Still, if I had such a large front garden, I would plant a hedge, after first erecting a simple mesh fence to keep the smaller family members corralled within the property. While the hedge is establishing in the first couple of years, a quick annual climber such as canary creeper (Tropaeolum peregrinum), sweet pea or even runner beans could be used to take the bare look off things. All of these need to be grown from seed, and protected from slugs and snails while in their infancy.
Within four or five years (depending on the plant species) the hedge would be a reasonable height - provided it was given a good start in life, properly watered in, and kept weeded and mulched. New gardeners are often seduced by the idea of putting in larger and more mature hedging plants for an immediate screen, but in fact, smaller, younger plants catch up in a couple of years. They have more vigour, so they bulk out more satisfactorily and need far less coddling. It's not unusual to see dead bits in an expensive, instant hedge because the owners have been too busy to water it. So, if your life is hectic, use small, two-year old hedging plants, and you'll spend very little time looking after them, compared to the luxury versions.
Beech makes a lovely hedge, looking at home in the country or town garden (although it doesn't thrive where it is exposed to the emissions from heavy traffic). It holds onto its coppery-coloured, dead foliage in winter, and renews it each spring, with fresh, lightly-hairy, green leaves - so it makes an effective year-round screen. It looks equally good in a formal garden, or in a casual one. Hornbeam has slightly coarser leaves, but behaves similarly to beech, and tolerates harsher conditions.
Mixed hedges are often planted in rural gardens, but they suit cottagey houses in urban areas - such as that inhabited by my friends. Berry and flower enliven this kind of boundary, and many shrub species, both evergreen and deciduous, can be combined: fuchsia, hawthorn, holly, laurel, snowberry, berberis, pyracantha, escallonia and Rosa rugosa - to mention just a few. A diverse planting attracts plenty of wildlife, but even a mono-species hedge provides shelter for insects and birds. Hedges are also cheap to plant and maintain, they filter the wind better than a solid barrier, they absorb noise, and prevent dust and pollution from entering a garden. How could anyone not love a hedge?
Well, my friends, apparently. Having thrown out the hedge idea, they considered raising the height of the boundary with a trellis - which seemed to me like the next best thing to a hedge. Within minutes, I had it wreathed in my mind's eye with all manner of climbing plants, their flowers peeking cheekily out through the framework at passers-by. (Other people's gardens are far easier to get creative with than one's own.) Clematis, honeysuckle, the thornless, shocking-pink rose 'Zápherine Drouhin' and potato vine (both the vigorous purple-flowered Solanum crispum 'Glasnevin' and the more well-behaved, white-flowered S. laxum 'Album') were all ideal candidates to be let loose through its timber structure.
But when I checked back recently for a trellis update, it transpired that they actually had a trellis before, but that the "creepers failed to creep". And the idea was not about to be resurrected again, thank you very much.
Before we let the trellis concept die, however, let me just remark that the most likely reason for the creepers (clematis, apparently) not creeping, was that possibly they had been planted and then just let to get on with it. Clematis are greedy feeders, and need lots of organic matter (well-rotted manure, garden compost and the like) dug into the ground before planting. The soil at their feet should be kept nicely damp for the first growing season (a mulch will help to retain the moisture). When watering, the trick is to thoroughly drench them occasionally (rather than giving them frequent little trickles), so that the moisture goes deep into the soil and encourages the formation of long roots. If a plant makes a deep root system when it is young, it is better able to resist dry conditions later on. Clematis, and indeed most climbers, welcome a spring mulch of well-rotted farmyard manure, or a handful of pelleted chicken manure.
But back to my friends' boundary. At present they are mulling over a wooden fence, not a "forbidding one with big concrete poles". Instead they'd like a "light, inviting fence" to give them some privacy but not to send an aggressive, "keep out" message. "We'd like to see the tops of the neighbours' heads, but not their eyes." (In fact, they're quite friendly folks, but understandably, they don't want to share each nuance of family life in the garden with everyone who passes.)
The thing about a fence though, is that - unless one enjoys the view of a timber screen - it needs to be clad in vegetation. The easiest way of proving a climbing network is to stretch sturdy wires horizontally along the upright posts, using either vine eyes or heavy-duty screw eyes. The more air that can circulate between the wires and the timber, the better the plants will grow.
Most plants that will scramble over a trellis are also suitable for this arrangement. Besides those mentioned above, there are passionflower (needs lots of tying in, but it's worth it), vine (Vitis species), and golden hop. The latter two lose their foliage in winter, but have satisfyingly architectural leaves the rest of the time. Wall shrubs (those that respond to being tightly pruned) are another option: pyracantha, cotoneaster, flowering quince, ceanothus, forsythia, winter jasmine, Garrya elliptica and Itea ilicifolia. A grove of sunflowers would also provide cheap and cheerful (and temporary) screening. And if my friends don't like any of those ideas, they might reconsider a hedge, which will grow alongside their fence, and take over its job when it falls apart.