Creating privacy in the garden

Yet another hurdle to face in the world of renting a house.

Our house is the end house of a small row of 'new build' houses, and for some reason they decided to use low fences around the back gardens - probably because the gardens are north facing and already limited in terms of sunlight.

If we owned the house perhaps we could build a taller fence, add trellis to the top of the fence we have, or plant a hedge... Sadly we don't have that option so I need to try and think of something else.

Normally the privacy wouldn't be an issue, but now with a baby on the way I plan on sitting outside a lot & the neighbours are not exactly friendly, making it rather awkward! Also rolo (our dog) loves to bark at people in and around the garden. 

I remember last year feeling rather awkward when having BBQs and sitting out at the same time as other people on the row as there is no privacy.

It's so hard trying to think of something! So I have been doing some google researching...

Perhaps we could use trellis in some way?

Maybe a tall plant ie bamboo, but in pots along the boundaries?

Something suggests a water feature to help soften the noises of other people around, this maybe useful as far as rolos barking is concerned...perhaps some wind chimes too? Then again they may make him bark more haha! 

Hmm I shall carry on in my quest.... 

UPDATE

I have collected some pictures of ideas, also I posted in a forum and got some ideas from there.

I love this trellis, perhaps we could do this, just in the middle of the garden making just a section for the table more private, although the washing line could be a problem with this:

This looks so amazing but I don't think it is something we could achieve:

Here is another smaller trellis idea which looks quite nice:

More trellis ideas:

Another idea is bambo sheets stapled to the fence, this looks nice, however I am not sure what the neighbours might think if we just bang this up, they might think we are a bit rude:

Perhaps we could just do sections like this, interspersed with climbing plants on bamboo sticks in pots:

Or literally just use pots with bamboo sticks and climbers:

Another bamboo idea I love is this, using sweet peas, we could even take it down in the winter if we use pots for the sweet peas:

Or we could grown bamboo in pots:

Someone on the forum suggests using a wind break like the type you use at the seaside and another suggests to use the washing line to make a tent type structure but I feel this would block out the sun. 

Still not sure what to do, doesn't really help that the husband hates the idea of a trellis or anything that looks like a trellis, but at least I have ideas for now.

Reality check

So as usual, last night I took to twitter to ask the gardening community for some advice after reading a blog post on the shoot gardening website entitled "how much should a garden cost?".

And I guess I hadn't really been sensible with my grand landscaping ideas, considering the fact we are renting, so I have taken heed of people's advice which was to use containers, hanging baskets etc.

So today I have dug out all my old plant pots-found I have 17 and only 2 sets of matching ones, which is slightly annoying, but might as well work with what I have!

Although there is one idea I have seen which I haven't decided yet whether it is worth the effort....

http://www.talesfromahappyhouse.com/2013/05/perking-up-your-plant-pots.html?m=1

Basically painting your plant pots with spray paint to brighten them up and also make them match a bit better:

I think it looks lovely, but not sure if it will work on my cheap plastic pots & if I will have time to do it before baby comes, hmmm...

Also my husband suggested that we so a symmetrical design in our front garden by mirroring the corner plot, so that is what I have done, and we have removed the old vegetable plot as I think it's going to be all about the flowers this year! 

So the front is now looking like this:

Just need to pick some flowers now to fill all my pots & our two corner patches, and I would quite like to put a cherry blossom tree in the middle of the garden.

Final bit of action today was to tidy up a bit down the side of the house ready to begin action there:

Front, back & sides please...

Ideally this is the kind of thing I would like:

Front:

Back:

Sides:

To change or not to change...

The layout of the front garden is very boring and unsymmetrical, I really want to change it but it would involve a lot of effort, not to mention money, which with it being a rented house I am not sure we can warrant.

This is what we have:

As you can see we did dig out a corner and a small 'circular' patch, which didn't end up very circular & we put in a raised vegetable bed. 

And although it doesn't seem much, it took a lot of effort. This for a few reasons:

-The layer of wood chippings, to do any digging work these needed to be moved (easier said than done).

-underneath the wood chippings is a later of black lining...

This combined with 

-a lot of weeds, roots & old tree stumps

... Makes it very difficult to take up the lining to get to the ground underneath.

-then once you do get underneath all the layers, the actual ground underneath is of a clay consistency & is combined with a lot of bricks & rubble discarded by the builders when building the house.

So as you can see doing the 2 small planting areas we have now was a task in itself & the reason we went for the raised area to grow vegetables last year. Although this year I am not too bothered about growing veg as although it was good fun, not a lot of it got eaten for fear of bugs, slugs, etc.

I really don't know what to do with it, I would love to do an amazing but simple garden design something like this for example:

But that would involve way to much time, money & effort. If this was our house I would be willing to invest in doing it but the truth of the fact is living here we could in theory be asked to leave come September when our contract is up for renewal! 

Perhaps we could get away with doing something like this, some raised beds in the middle but again I have no idea of the cost of something like this & it would be sad to spend all that money & then leave it behind:

Then again can I be satisfied with looking out on this everyday:

I just really don't know!!! Argh need solutions! Any help would be much appreciated, thanks for reading :) 

Another big idea...

At the moment we have this rather drab view down the side of the house:

The idea is that I would like to put in an archway (about where the drainpipe is) and perhaps a small trellis at the side, but it needs to be cheap too. 

Just been looking for inspiration and here is what I have found. 

This is the kind of thing I am looking for, however this style is quite pricey so maybe something a bit more natural or maybe a thin metal one with lots of flowers:

So there are 3 things to decide really: 

-What type of arch to use

-what climbing plants to use on the arch

-what to do to the side ie trellising, tall planting, bamboo perhaps? 

Decisions, decisions, best get on with it really since I only have 5 weeks now until my due date! 

Plants, lovely pretty plants!

Just wanted to do a post to help me remember the plants I already have in the garden and the plants I'd really like this year, ready for when I go shopping, rather than just ending up with a random array like last year. 

What we have:

Daffodils:

Snowdrops:

Hydrangea:

Lavender:

And 2 fushias:

What I would like:

A cherry tree:

Tulips:

Lupins:

Angelonia:

Some fluffy ornamental grassses:

Something like the grass in this pic:

Hosta:

Cyclamen:

Buddlea:

Clematis:

Hyacinths:

White allysum: