Fences – Garden, Bamboo, Privacy, Wooded or Metal Enhance Homes

A fence can enhance the beauty of your home. Here’s a few tips on how to choose the right one!

Fences are fun to plan, fun to build and fun to own! Yes – fences are even fundamental to good landscaping. They add interest and character to the home. Often the use of flowers, shrubs and grass alone, is not enough to give your garden the interest it deserves. However, many homeowners do see the little things that set off a house. Like one I met last summer! When I admired the neat, low white picket fence around the yard, the owner, “Yes, it gives our lawn a nice edging!

All of us have seen rows of newly built houses where there are no plantings but the newly made lawn – barren scene at best. Well-placed, attractively designed fences can do much to relieve monotony and tie the house and garden together. Fences are simple to erect and take up little space. No other architectural feature can take the place of the right fence.

No matter what type of architecture your home may feature, your fence can enhance or detract from the beauty of the house. It should be designed to fit in with the character of your home. If you can picture your Cape Cod cottage snuggled behind a low white picket fence with a few colorful little flower heads crowding between the pickets to greet passers-by, you’ll get an idea of what a fence can do. Or, yours may be a Spanish hacienda which would look best with its tiled roof projecting over a split-rail fence.

Many beautiful fences were built during the Colonial period when they were needed to keep out strangers and animals, as well as give young “Tom Sawyers” something to whitewash. Although a fence is not a necessity in today’s front yard, it can be a charming addition. Today’s fences are designed for decoration.

Many landscape architects have made a study of fences for various types of homes and have developed one to fit each type of architecture. Those early-day picket fences have been streamlined by eliminating the heavily decorated posts, bottom rails and stringers so that they are entirely suitable for our modern homes.

Low borders of hooped iron around the edge of the lawn complemented by a row of low flowers like daisies seem like a white lace edging on the green petticoat of your lawn. If your home is on a hillside or slope the fence may be a necessary part of the landscaping or terracing – a simplified retaining wall that adds interest to the yard and does double duty in holding the lawn in place.

Let’s look at Garden Fence Types and Styles

By James Stewart

Related Articles Of Interest:

• PVC Fence and Prefabricated Fences
• Landscape Lighting – Add Security and Accents to Your Home and Landscape
• Garden Fencing – All Types and Styles for the Home
• Planning The Small Back Yard