Statement slats: protect your privacy in a city garden with wall art, bold-coloured fencing and panels
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Happily, bare panels and posts can instantly be transformed with a lick of dark paint.
Farrow & Ball’s Studio Green Exterior Eggshell (£27 for 750ml; farrow-ball.com) will make your fence recede magically from view, leaving your plants — particularly those with pale flowers and leaves — as the stars of the show.
Hot favourite in London right now is horizontal slatted fencing, and for good reason.
It allows wind to filter through so won’t blow over, has clean, contemporary lines and doubles as a trellis for climbing plants if you leave fair-sized gaps between the batons. Attach it to the top of low brick walls for privacy.
Use freestanding panels within the garden to hide compost bins or trampolines, create secluded relaxing areas or frame large pots or other focal points.
Install it in front of an existing unattractive fence — if the eyesore is on your neighbour’s side,thus avoiding potential boundary arguments.
The boundary on the left of your garden looking from the house tends to be your responsibility. To keep relations sweet and maximise your light, don’t go above two metres unless there is a precedent for something higher.
Fence supplier Silva Timber says hardwood Western Red Cedar slatted screens will last many years and will silver beautifully in time.
Silva’s 1.8sqm panel kits are £182.87, but factor in time to put it together, or the cost of getting someone to do so. The beauty is that you can make the gaps between the horizontal batons as big or as small as you want.
A good trick is to make the gaps narrower at the bottom for full privacy and then leave bigger ones above head height to let in as much light as possible.
Jacksons Fencing does slightly cheaper Venetian panels that come ready made with standard 15mm gaps between horizontals, though, being treated softwood, these may not last quite as long.
Proving that boundaries can be art in their own right, designer Stefano Marinaz decided to make the fences of two tiny west London gardens the main feature.
The entire back of one of the gardens is made up of exquisitely narrow vertical batons of Iroko hardwood, sweeping the eye to ground level where contemporary furniture makes an enticing cluster.
Within the fence, which replaced an equally tall overgrown conifer hedge, two barely visible doors conceal an air-conditioning unit and waterproof storage area.
Marinaz has cleverly echoed the fine lines of the fence in the chairs and table, giving the whole garden a delicate, refined feel against which multistemmed trees and fresh woodland planting stand out in strong relief. The effect is enclosed, but cocooning rather than claustrophobic.
In the second garden nearby, he created a really warm, sociable space by surrounding the courtyard with wider Iroko verticals of varying widths and tones, interspersed with bronze posts — making the fence a piece of art.
Three huge burnt orange lamps hanging over the central table draw the eye to the intimate seating area, where cushions pick up the same orange tone.
Terracotta pots, banded with horizontal lines, add another splash of warmth. Loose, cottage-style planting with hardy geranium “Rozanne”, hellebores and elegant amelanchier lamarckii trees, creates a fluffy ruff around the edges.
The Italian-born designer, who trained with east London’s award-winning Arne Maynard, says: “I like to use strong lines in the garden to contrast with the natural forms of the plants. The plants do their thing, change and die back throughout the year, but we still need to maintain a strong design so we always have permanent elements repeated throughout, creating a link that holds it all together.”
Commission: Stefano Marinaz: stefanomarinaz.com
Garden build: by Bamboo Landscaping
Plants: Hortus Loci
Kettal Net chairs and ZigZag footstool: ambientedirect.com
Mood outdoor armchairs: tribu.com
Taiki lamps; Giro adjustable coffee/dining table: paolalenti.it/en
For fencing: try silvatimber.co.uk; jacksons-fencing.co.uk