The Garden House’s Spring planting started in February. Mid-February the trees were trimmed for the upcoming hurricane season. Hurricane season begins June 1st of any year. I hadn’t trimmed the garden in 4 years. This year the garden was due for rethinking, recreating and a full body trim. All the lower and middle branches were pruned back and only lightweight canopy remains. All the privacy created by the mid branches was hacked off. I hear and see my neighbors when I didn’t see them in their homes or hear them for many years.
Deciding on new plantings and privacy fencing takes time. Feeling out how the garden changes and how our living habits change is why it takes time. After various choices, I settled on the lightweight reed fence. Keeping to the native Floridian theme, the reed fence comes from an easily renewable resource. It comes from water reeds that grow rapidly and readily.
Unrolling the reed fence along the chain link fence immediately shifted the tone of the garden. Suddenly, there was a color in the garden that wasn’t present before. The thin mid-brown shafts of reed grasses removed the blank dark air and replace it with soft pinkish tan.
Once fully installed, the garden went from raw wildness to a type of Japanese garden wannabe. It would be only too easy to turn this garden into Japanese in style and ornament. But I won’t guide it that way. I am reading up on Japanese gardens on the internet and the book “Creating Japanese Gardens”. The direction of this garden is and will be native Floridian. Using Japanese landscape concepts like little fences coming out of nowhere going into nowhere creates texture and color without the heaviness of a wood fence. A vinyl fence isn’t the material of this garden. The reeds were a living plant. This garden is about the living balance.
I used two 6′ fences. One broke the visual continuation from my patio through to my neighbor’s patio. Though the reed fence hardly blocks the view due to its reasonable transparency, it tells the eye to stop when the view reaches the fence. The second one breaks the endless view into two neighbors’ yards to the east. On that one, I am trellising the butterfly plant: bleedingheart. And I will also look around for passiflora for further full sun perennials. The vines will climb and bring butterflies and birds to areas of the east. Hopefully, these vines will be strong enough to hold back the reed fence from the summer wind events. The garden fence is designed to let nature itself keep it upright.