{"id":3779,"date":"2022-09-06T06:12:22","date_gmt":"2022-09-06T14:12:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/?p=3779"},"modified":"2022-09-06T06:14:58","modified_gmt":"2022-09-06T14:14:58","slug":"fencing-with-the-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/fencing-with-the-garden\/","title":{"rendered":"Fencing With the Garden"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Hydrangea<\/a>Sometimes you choose to make changes in the landscape.\u00a0 Sometimes the landscape does the deciding.\u00a0 In my case, the situation is a little bit of both.\u00a0 The wooden perimeter fence that bounds my backyard is decrepit and needs replacing.\u00a0 It was handsome once, but that was fifteen years ago.\u00a0 Weather and normal aging have done their work and now the fence is missing slats in some places and wobbles alarmingly in others.\u00a0 The wooden gate that connects the front and back yards has lost its latch, making it easy for that alpha male deer, Mr. Antlers, and his brood to stroll right through.<\/p>\n

In this post-pandemic era, when every other driveway in my neighborhood contains a dumpster that bears silent witness to an ongoing renovation project, it was hard to find an available fencing contractor.\u00a0\u00a0 I accomplished that after several weeks of frequent phone calls.\u00a0 Now, the eye-watering estimate has been accepted, the work is scheduled for about two weeks from now and the neighbors have been alerted.\u00a0 The hardest part\u2014aside from giving the contractor all my money\u2014will be clearing the extraneous vegetation from the area in front of the fence.\u00a0 When I say \u201cextraneous\u201d, I mean \u201cexcessive\u201d.<\/p>\n

Like many people, I have planted shrubs in front of much of the fencing, and all of them are vigorous to say the least.\u00a0 The three blue, mophead hydrangeas have thrived, especially after the cool, relatively wet spring.\u00a0 Their relative, the oakleaf hydrangea, which began life as a root sucker of the gargantuan bush in the front garden, now threatens to dwarf its parent.\u00a0 A butterfly bush, which I love for its midnight purple blooms, reaches in all directions, including right over the fence.\u00a0 Two roses of Sharon have also grown to impressive size.<\/p>\n

All of those leafy specimens are now undergoing a process that corporate types call \u201cright sizing\u201d.\u00a0 The end result will be more manageable shrubs, backed by a corridor that will be easily navigable for the fence installers.<\/p>\n

In addition to dealing with the welcome inhabitants of the garden, I also have to discipline the rampant English ivy that I have peeled back from the fence on a regular basis for years.\u00a0 The ivy is positively well-mannered compared to my neighbors\u2019 wisteria, which is expansion-minded, invasive and extremely opportunistic.\u00a0 It was planted at least two generations ago and has spread its thick vines under and above ground wherever it can find even a square millimeter of soil.\u00a0 It has surged beneath the fence and over the top.\u00a0 Now it has to go.<\/p>\n

All of the above is easy to do as long as you have the right tools and a high tolerance for being sweaty, achy, itchy, overheated, dehydrated, dirty and festooned with cobwebs.\u00a0 Since I am doing the job incrementally, I experience all of those things about every other day.<\/p>\n

As with many other tortuous processes, this clearing exercise is not without its benefits.\u00a0 I have finished with the mophead hydrangeas and the butterfly bush and I must admit that they look better than they have in years.\u00a0 Newly trimmed and tidied, they can take their rightful places as purposeful parts of the design, rather than random additions.\u00a0 The trunk of the butterfly bush split during a storm several years ago, but at the time I couldn\u2019t bear to do the radical pruning necessary to reinvigorate it.\u00a0 Now the weaker half is gone, and the newly renovated butterfly bush looks healthier already.\u00a0 I am sure the same will be true of the oakleaf hydrangea and the roses of Sharon.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This is certainly not the optimal time to trim all of the shrubs, and I may lose a few of next year\u2019s blooms for my efforts.\u00a0 I think the improvement in plant health and appearance will compensate for that, as will the new fence.<\/p>\n

Gardens are about using both positive and negative spaces.\u00a0 By creating more negative space around my shrubs, I have added depth and definition to my planting scheme.\u00a0 There is already something Zen about the look of the shrub border.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know how much I needed that until it happened.<\/p>\n

As for the ivy and the wisteria, I will have made small a dent in their mutual quest for landscape hegemony.\u00a0 Maybe the effort will even inspire me to pursue the English ivy eradication project that I should have done years ago.<\/p>\n

The new fence and all the pre-installation editing will also make the whole garden look more beautiful and I intend to spend a lot of time enjoying that this fall.\u00a0 Since I will have no money, I am sure it will be a great comfort.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes you choose to make changes in the landscape.\u00a0 Sometimes the landscape does the deciding.\u00a0 In my case, the situation is a little bit of both.\u00a0 The wooden perimeter fence that bounds my backyard is decrepit and needs replacing.\u00a0 It was handsome once, but that was fifteen years ago.\u00a0 Weather and normal aging have done … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,2,3],"tags":[156,2763,1840,622,153,2764,81,457,2489],"class_list":["post-3779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","tag-english-ivy","tag-fences","tag-hedera-helix","tag-hydrangeas","tag-invasive-vines","tag-landscape-elements","tag-pruning","tag-rose-of-sharon","tag-wisteria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3779"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3783,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3779\/revisions\/3783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}