When it comes to garden, terrace and balcony design, many hobby gardeners and those who enjoy fresh air are spoiled for choice these days: creatively processed materials definitely offer alternatives to natural privacy screens made from plants or natural materials, but the latter are often a step ahead and can offer practical and aesthetic benefits shine.

With natural stone and plants, prying eyes can of course be avoided

A privacy hedge as an alternative to the wall

Thanks to tricky products such as special stone baskets, it is no longer necessarily a question of the appropriate official approval whether you can build a wall around your own garden or not. Of course, a wall primarily offers a certain feeling of security and durability with its stability. In addition, natural stone walls, for example, with their very special animal and plant world, can represent a very decorative and ecologically valuable design element in a garden. However, walls often have a very deterring or even restrictive effect if they stand at a certain height on level ground and effectively prevent any view and breath of air. A privacy hedge made of plants such as beech, thuja subspecies or the evergreen cherry laurel, on the other hand, offers a similar level of privacy, but is a little more permeable to light, air and various types of small and microorganisms. Many bird and insect species need dense hedges as a breeding ground and habitat, which is why they also fulfill a very important function in the garden.

The care required for a natural privacy screen in the garden

The maintenance required for a natural privacy screen in the garden naturally depends not only on its dimensions in terms of length, but also on the height and width of the trees and shrubs planted in a row. The following plants, which are particularly popular when planting privacy hedges, have such high growth rates that pruning up to two or three times a year may be necessary:

  • beech
  • forsythia
  • weigela
  • Climbing plants such as knotweed and Virginia creeper
  • jasmine

Conversely, this willingness to grow also means a relatively high nutrient requirement in the form of fertilizer and compost as well as good pruning tolerance, since mistakes made during pruning usually grow out again very quickly, as if by themselves.

Make your own natural privacy screen from natural materials

Not every natural privacy screen has to be a living privacy screen. With a little patience and dexterity, privacy fences and mats can also be made from natural materials such as reed, hazelnut twigs and other materials. In particular, the fence-like privacy screen variants made of branches and other pieces of wood can subsequently be used as climbing aids for a blooming privacy screen.

Integrate privacy hedges naturally into the garden design

In a well-designed garden, privacy hedges are not just a means to an end at the property boundary, but can also represent quite significant accents in the visual composition of different plant species as a wall of flowering shrubs or as a green grid of climbing plants such as wisteria and trumpet flower. Ideally, you should ensure that the individual garden areas are predominantly tiered, with lower shrubs in front of the higher privacy hedge ideally also providing a color contrast.

tips

A natural privacy screen must also be attached and adequately secured in an exposed location with regular, strong gusts of wind, just like an artificial privacy screen.

Category:

Garden design