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Climbers for the New Fence - March 01 2020
Climbers can't be missed in a hopeless romantic's garden. I've been holding off on planting perennial climbers because essentially all our fencework needed replacing. It wasn't easy, although I'm generally a pretty patient person. Last summer however, we had one part of the fencework done on the westside of the back garden. So, I decided it was time to make part of the newly fenced area in the back of the garden a bit more hospitable and private by putting in some climbers.
Here you can see our new fence in the back garden next to our outbuilding. As you can see, you can see through the fence quite well, so I also want to add climbers for a bit more privacy.
I wanted to get as much of my planned plants in as possible in the fall, to have the best results this spring/summer. So, we put in place a strong climbing structure on the fencing, with fairly thick steel wires for the plants to climb on. It is very sturdy by design, so if we want we can also grow small fruit trees or grapes on it at some point. In fact our neighbors had grapes on their (west-facing) side of the fence before it was replaced, which gave good fruit in the hot summer at our side of the fence too. For now, I focused only the part of the new fence that is next to our outbuilding. Mostly because the real back of the back garden is now a temporary dumping ground with piles of soil, concrete poles, brick paving, and some large loose useless wooden screens that the previous owners of the garden so kindly left us. The "paths" in our garden are also all a bit "quirky":
Six different kinds of pavings in just this part of the garden. And...what the heck is this?!:
Quicksand?!
In this part of the garden there happens to be some form of a wooden deck, which is placed over the complete width between our outbuilding to the fence. It was already partly broken, so I started by ripping out a few more planks to be able to get in the soil near the fence. Eventually I want to get all of the wooden decking out, but I'm not completely sure how to do that yet. I tried to see what is underneath: It seems that in some areas there is actually some kind paving stone underneath, and in other areas there is definitely anti-root foil which has not at all prevented weeds from popping up right through the deck. Beyond this I have learned that this house and garden always have surprises for you when you lift anything, and the surprise almost always involves large amounts screws.
An example of my finds. Just when I thought I got 'em all.
Provides a clue as to why we find screws everywhere. Don't ask me why, but this was not exceptional on this lot. To illustrate further: when I stripped our bedroom (about 9 m2) to prepare for remodeling I removed about two cups full of screws.
So I put on my gloves, boots and safety glasses (safety first!). It was actually quite hard to get the planks near the fence out on my own. It involved ripping out nails and using levering tricks in the least subtle way, with a crowbar and claw hammer. But eventually, they came out (I won). Then I cut through the anti-root foil. Finally, I dug the pockets of earth that were now bare and added in some good quality soil I had left over from making my raised beds. This is the result:
Not super inspiring yet, but it is a start! The plan for this area of the garden is bright orange and pink and lush green and scent. The fence is east facing (on the west side of the garden), but this particular part of the garden gets some sun, and is sheltered from wind, and is quite warm because it is next to our brick outbuilding that radiates out heat from the sun. So I selected orange-red Lonicera brownii 'Dropmore Scarlet' (a honeysuckle; Dutch: kamperfoelie), Trachelospermum jasminoides "Pink air" (a pink star jasmine; Dutch: toscaanse jasmijn) for green foliage in winter, and Jasminum officinale (common jasmine, Dutch: Jasmijn). I'm curious to see especially if the latter will perform well: I would love to have a good true jasmine in the garden. I planted them as far from the fence as I could manage such that they won't be to dry. All of the plants have survived the winter, which was very mild, and all of the storms, which were not so mild. Now that spring is here there is some growth already. I'm looking forward to see the result come summer.