Is it a wall or is it a fence? I guess it’s a bit of both, a ‘gender’ fluid kind of garden structure in keeping with the very modern times we live in where nothing is quite what it seems.
Is it a wall or a fence?
Having constructed a double skin brick wall of 8 red brick courses topped with a decorative row of blue engineering bricks, the landscaper’s next challenge was to make a wooden frame on which would sit some decorative wood screening.
Cue
early morning timber delivery as there’s no way we can squeeze 3.3 m lengths of
screening in the back of our puny motors.
You're gonna need a bigger car
Now before we go into the build details, let’s recap on why we’ve chosen to go with this particular style of boundary. The lower brick wall section is acting as a root barrier to prevent further encroachment from next door’s unruly winter jasmine and the upper slatted arrangement is to enable stray branches to grow through the fence rather than push against it thus preventing future fence damage. Any branches that have snuck through can then be snipped off from our side. I doubt even her hedge will be able to push down this wall but plants can be remarkably strong so you never know.
The encroaching plant menace
Okay
back to the project in hand. The slatted
fence arrangement sits on a rectangular frame made of 2 inch square timber that
is screwed into the thick fence posts at either end of the wall. You can just about make out the frame through
the gaps.
2 inch square timber for the internal frame
The
slats are made of timber in a rhombic profile design so they’re not completely
flat but angled to allow them to neatly slot together.
Rhombic profile wood screening timber
Each
length of rhombic timber has been cut down and screwed onto the 2 inch timber
frame with wood screws. The beauty of
this arrangement is that any tatty old slats can be individually replaced when
required rather than having to replace an entire fence panel. They’re also about an inch thick so should be
able to withstand the brisk Chi winds that regularly batter our fences.
Surface slats sit on a wooden sub frame
The
finished arrangement is nice to look at, not quite as unappealing as a solid
wall might have looked. With a coat of
paint or coloured varnish it’ll look fabulous.
The finished fence/wall
And so the first part of our hard landscaping projects in the back garden has been achieved but that’s not the end of the story. There’s still the rest of the old fence to be replaced, a low retaining wall to be built at the front of the flower border plus a special two tier raised bed that I’ve got planned for this corner.
 |
| A two tiered raised bed to be built in this corner |
 |
| The finished patio area |
 |
| Can't wait to get the table and chairs out |
Ah, there’s no rest for the wicked!
No comments:
Post a Comment