Chestnut fence remediation

You know how it is when you walk past a Work in Progress part of your garden… for years.

And then finally you just realise it isn’t working.

This year I decided that the fence idea I had a while back is actually an eyesore and it was time to fix it.

A few years ago Nicolas made this gorgeous perfectly secure anti badger fence.

And believe me, a tautly installed chestnut fence is one of my most favourite things.

Because as you all know, it just doesn’t last.

Animals, gravity, plants… everything gets in the way of your perfect fence.

Yep. Wonky.

And this is all my mad work.

I decided, you see, to enlarge the garden. Nicolas had tightly secured the fence and I wanted to grow the Dry Garden further. Longer and wider.

And this is a narrow terrace on a slope. So I needed to shift this fence, and then infill. My dream was that I would pile in the logs and branches and endless lawn clippings and pruning. And after a good year or so it would mulch down and then I could plant it up…

So for two years there has been this weird strip of mess all the way along the garden.

A work in progress. I had to keep explaining it to anyone who asked why it looked the way it did.

And then a while back I thought. Enough. The wood I had put in as a base layer to build up the slope was a mistake. Box logs. And boy are they indestructible. They just haven’t rotted a bit.

I’m actually impressed.

I decided that it was time to shift the fence back to the original skinny parameters. And just give up on the idea.

Dismantling it took a few days as I had to be very careful about any wild beastie nests in the bank.

And now it’s back to where it started. But with a bit less taut and pleasing shape. At least I have pictures of when it looked neat (below).

But everything has bulked out nicely behind. I have left the euphorbias to romp away. And this tiny stipa gigantea is now a whopper.

I have kept the skinnier box branches to bulk out an area further along the dry garden… under the fig tree. I can’t chip them as they are so tough, there were so many of them I didn’t want to spend the afternoon wheelbarrowing the away. And I have stacked them properly now (read, a bit neater) so they almost look like a design feature.

So glad this one eyesore has gone. But I’m chastened as I shouldn’t have enlarged it in the first place.