Winter can be a dull time for landscapers, with seemingly little growing, harsh conditions and unfriendly weather setting everything back. With the plant life and lawn suppressed by the cold, it’s easy to imagine that nothing can be done for the next few months – but that is not the case!
In fact, the inactivity in your garden’s flora makes a perfect chance to work on the non-living components of the garden, like the paving, ornamentation and fencing! With the plants down for the count, you won’t have to worry about tending them, disrupting their life cycles or ensuring they grow to their full potential – your projects can continue without needing to pay them any heed at all!
Therefore this is an ideal opportunity for some landscaping work.
Our other posts have focused on the likes of mulch creation and driveway maintenance in the winter, so there’s no need to recreate them here – instead, we’ll look at building, maintaining working around fencing, which is a must for any garden, and good to have ready-made when spring rolls around and rapid growth begins again.
If you’re looking for completely new fencing to mark out the edges of your garden, or simply to section it off for the likes of a vegetable plot, then you first have to consider your operating budget and the purpose the fence will serve. Different styles of fencing have different capabilities, and therefore are not all suited for the same jobs. Marking off a vegetable plot with a small picket fence is one thing – attempting to keep neighbourhood dogs out of your garden with it is quite another. Similarly, it’s best not to rely on chain-link fencing as part of a beautiful landscape piece – while very effective at keeping out animal intruders, it is an eyesore when used improperly.
Once you know the purpose of your fence and have settled on design that will suit your needs, it’s time to think about installation. A wooden or picket fence will be held in place by sturdy wooden supports, with a cross-bar holding the individual boards that comprise the main body of the fence. This is often a very attractive design, and can be painted or treated to suit a prevailing colour scheme in the landscaping. Different styles of wooden fence can also be used, from simple panel fences to much more complex designs of interwoven planks which are very visually striking.
Chain-link and wire fences, on the other hand, while less bisible from a distance and providing greater overall visibility through the fence, must often be held in place with much sturdier supports, like the heavy concrete posts often seen on the fences of fields and public buildings. While less attractive themselves, these fences can be looked through, meaning they are ideal for locations with beautiful views, purposes that require being able to see through it (as around a herb garden, for example) and in gardens that would otherwise be made too dark by a wooden fence. The use of wire fencing in this last case is especially important, since a more “attractive” wooden fence would have rendered the garden dark, cold and damp, where a wire fence permits light and wind to pass through it freely.
For more information on fencing, fence installation and what sort of fence would best suit your purposes, or for general advice on fencing in Liverpool, contact J&L Landscaping. Our team will be happy to help you with whatever you need.