Garden Advice Please!

I have asked in two other sections but am not getting much help, I know though that the Mid Atlantic grew will express their opinions and thoughts!

I live in the woods and several of my beds back up to the woods. Now when I say woods I mean really woods and those woods are always trying to inch into my garden beds. So I need some way to separate them from each other without installing a good solid wood privacy fence.

So any ideas?

I was thinking of using the rolled bamboo fencing but don't know how sturdy or durable it is, does anyone have any experience with that? I thought it would at least provide a break between the back of the bed and the woods.

The bamboo would look good, I don't know how sturdy it is though. How about a hedge row or flowering shrub row to define the separation?

From one Lady G to another. I came across this discussion while doing a search http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/jgard/msg1009592826056.html
I have no experience with the bamboo but I just don't think it would hold up especially as a stand-alone fence, If you were covering a chain link fence then I think it would hold up better.
I like Jen's idea but if you have the time, money and manpower I'd go with the wood fence then you could hang beautiful garden art or old mirrors on it.
Last year I had a white vinyl privacy fence installed between myself and the neighbors, best thing I ever did, It also helped me regain space I lost trying to grow enough shrubs to create a screen. But I haven't the heart to hang anything from it yet, haet drilling holes in the posts. Wonder it any of the Command removeable hooks would work outside.
Chris

I will post pictures later so you can see what I am looking to do.

Fencing in our property with a "real" fence isn't feasible. The way the house sits and all makes it all but impossible and we have 5 acres of property and that is a ton of fence and it would look sort of dorky to do just areas lol.

I don't do trimming and pruning unless it is absolutely mandatory because I can't see off the front porch anymore lol, so hedges are pretty much out. I know I'm a lazy gardener lol.. Plus there is the whole deer eating most good shrubs :)

Pictures would certainly help. It's hard to know what to suggest from a description only. Yeah, I can understand the deer thing. I'm thinking bambi would look real good in the freezer if they don't stay out of my veggies! grrrrrrrrrrr

Could you put the vinyl lattice up between trees? I've done that in part of my back yard to hide a road. I screwed it into the trees w/3" deck screws. It doesn't hurt the trees. I;ve only had 1 piece tear in 4 years.

LG, you could try planting a 'hedge' of Kerria japonica http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/adv_search.php?searcher%5Bcommon%5D=&searcher%5Bfamily%5D=&searcher%5Bgenus%5D=kerria&searcher%5Bspecies%5D=japonica&searcher%5Bcultivar%5D=&searcher%5Bhybridizer%5D=&search_prefs%5Bblank_cultivar%5D=&search_prefs%5Bsort_by%5D=rating&images_prefs=both&Search=Search This is one shrub that will flower in deep shade and will quickly fill in to create a 4'-6' "wall", plus we've never had a problem with the deer browsing ours. Of course, if it was in the budget, an open lattice fence with Clematis growing on it would look nice as well, or maybe a combination of both :)

haha, that japonica is one of my favorite plants my mom called it "Angie's Marigold Bush" (because I love marigolds!) I have them flourishing here, I have tried to transplant several to the wood edge but someone keeps munching off the top growth lol. I suspect it is young deer as the older ones don't seem to mess with stuff but there are always things eaten, strange things sometimes too, like woodland poppies, munched!

Ok here is the first bed. I am constantly pulling vines and trees up out of here. The lemon balm is doing wonders to keep the deer from eating most of the stuff in this bed!

This is the backyard where the yard meets the woods, there are Carolina Allspice, Redbuds, a Viburnum and some of the "Marigold bush" back here and a couple of Forsythia.

You can see though why I have a problem lol..

That's really a pretty area, Idy. I don't think a fence is going to keep vines and trees from growing into your planting area. Mulch would help with the self sown seeds and would help some with the vines but for vines, you're going to have to just keep pulling and cutting them back.

Unfortunately, there's usually no such thing as a no maintenance garden but you can do things to lessen the maintenance and lots of mulch is one of them.

I had a devil of a problem with deer eating my daylilies. The flimsy plastic deer fencing works great. You can get a big roll of it for around $13 at Lowes. They're afraid of it because they can't see it in the dark and they're afraid of anything they might get tangled in. What really helped, though, was interplanting garlic with the daylilies. I got a huge bag of garlic at Costco in the fresh produce department for $3 something, pulled the cloves apart and planted oodles. The deer haven't touched the daylilies since.

Oh I pull and cut and pull and cut lol, I just want something that will provide a break between the two. We used to get mulch delivered by the truck load for all the beds but I stopped that. It makes no sense to spend hundreds of dollars on something that is almost all gone by the next year. So we got a cyclone rake and I have been using the mulched leaves in my beds and when I run out of room for that then I put them behind the beds hoping to hasten the growth. It is really bad around the pond area, some wild vine that keeps creeping in drives me crazy lol, I hate pulling out thick vines when I don't know what is under them!

I use a spray on my daylily buds to stop them from eating them. I spent a good half hour spraying all my deer edibles after I mowed today. I wish them no harm but boy do I wish they would eat the stuff in the woods!

Plant the garlic. One hour's work and you never have to worry about it again. I used the spray for a while but it would only work for a couple of weeks max and I got tired of having to spray all the time. You will probably have to keep using something else for a while but by next year, you'll have no deer problems near the garlic plantings.

They weren't just eating my daylily buds, they were eating entire plants down to the ground.

Oh no Hart that's awful! They only eat my buds, rose buds, lily buds, just about any flower bud they will eat, so I would need garlic all over my yard lol! The hosta when they get buds are stripped over night, it is so frustrating!

For what its worth, I picture the zig zag kind of fence you see at historic places, stacked logs or branches.
Nothing but privacy fence will have much effect on actually keeping things from growing through, but I think you'll like to see a reminder of where the cultivated ends and wild begins. Then you have a place to periodically whack back to. Or am I way off base? LOL I want to live in the woods anway, I think, but never really have, and have plenty to cope with in 1/2 acre of suburbia, so can't imagine what you have to keep up with.

Nope you got it Sally! I have tried logs around the edge but stuff just grows right over them and they vanish lol.

We had a neighbor who had a "Gravely" which is basically a brush mower on steroids lol, come and cut a "path" behind the beds but he was terrified of cutting poison ivy (which we had checked for before he came) and so wouldn't cut some areas. I keep asking dh if we can't rent one of those to clear the area but he keeps putting it off.

The HUGE challenge is going to come when we put the gazebo up behind the pond. It was on the deck but we built an all seasons room on the deck and so it came down. It is really nice though and I didn't want it tossed so I asked if we could put it up behind the pond. I don't know what I was thinking lol, I have no idea how I will keep the woods from taking it over!

Its funny, at one point I said ok I will just work with it and I started letting the raspberry vines grow, I was even weeding them out and everything. Don't you know that just prior to the berries being ready to pick and eat the deer came through and just ate the ones in the places I had been tending them! Sheesh!

My biggest aggravation is Japanese stilt grass its awful and so invasive!

I think the Gravely path is a good idea. My sister in Florida bought a yard with some natural area left in back. Granted, FL makes it more difficult, but it is REALLY hard to try and keep a natural area from being too overgrown . Isn't that the basis of the mowed lawn concept, really? LOL
I have seen the stilt grass in Catoctin Mtn Park.

I'll bet once you get it bushhogged once, you could keep it mowed with your regular mower.

The fence Sally is talking about is a split rail fence like these at Manassas Battlefield. The look very nice against a wooded area.

http://travel.webshots.com/photo/1073595157030314243zNlaek

I knew what she meant I love those fences, would love a stone wall even more lol!

Would maybe be able to mow it if we didn't dump the leaves on the area, can't really run the mower over a foot or more of leaves lol. Maybe bushhog it and put landscape fabric down, the stilt grass will still come back though that stuff will grow right on top of anything!

You know, you can actually use sections of fencing to good advantage, especially if you think in terms of making "corners" to define the backs of beds. I like the look of a rail fence that comes out from a corner and then angles down to the ground -- like it used to continue once but has broken down, rather than having it stop at an upright post.

Even brush piles can be attractive and give definition along the back of a garden, I think, especially if they consist more of branches than of brushy "bits." You can sort of stack and weave the branches together as you go, and they stay put pretty well. We've done some of this along the back of our little fence row of trees, partly as something to do with downed and trimmed branches, and partly because we wanted to try to keep kids from cutting through the garden on their bikes (it worked... now they go along the property line, which is fine).

I suppose that planting clumping bamboo as a backdrop would look out of place and too not-native? It might hold the woods at bay.

critter can I see some pictures of you "stick fence piles" lol, if I can show dh that they won't look bad lol I have a great chance of him not hauling them off as I make them, which is standard for him to do.

I don't want to plant anything that might like it so much that it would march off into the woods!

I'm out of town this week, but I'll try to remember when I get back... basically, it's like making a brush pile, but you can make it look as tidy as you'd like by using larger branches and arranging them along one line (all in the same direction, not poking out every which way). Brush piles are *fabulous* for attracting birds to your garden, also. :-)

Oh I know how wonderful they are lol, it is convincing dh that they can be useful and not an eyesore to him!

thanks!

What about making branch barriers or any kind of fence and then allowing clematis and/or american honeysuckle (not the invasive japanese kind) to scramble along it? That would disguise any less attractive qualities of the structure while still providing a visual "break" between your garden and the woods.

Loooking back at the first picture here, I just picture a split rail fence, the posts with two rails across between. I feel you need the fence to be 'clear' that is, relatively open at the bottom, allow you to keep stuff from growing up through it, cuz once it grows thru something its so much harder to get out. If you start growing something on a fence something else is going to crop up with it. Mom has old fences around her yard and its impossible to get stuff out of chain link or wire fence. If your goal is to keep the wild from creeping out, you need to be able to get in there and work.
My two cents!

Sally-- that's good to know. We have chain link fences around part of our yard, and I was mulling over having vines grow through them to hide them a bit -- but you are right -- we'd them be battling the ivy.

I just can't tel you how frustrated I am with her edges. Two neighbors that don't maintain anything from their sides. About impossible to get to the fence from the other side anyway because of 50 yr old bushes on that side. No-way maple seedlings coming through, Jap honeysuckle twined up, all you can do is try to clip at ground level IF you can reach it...aaaagggghhh. If you will have access to both sides of a fence OK, but if only one side--------------
Trying to stay on topic tho, this is why I said the above, keep it reachable at ground level- but I suppose if you were to go along regularly with brush killing chems that would be the less laborious way to keep a DPZ de plantarized zone

Even with the second picture, I see the rails along behind the shrubs.
OK I'm now settled on split rail, and ldy, you can build brush piles farther into the woods anytime, past DH's zone of influence!

yea haha, you might be settled on it but dh isn't going for it lol. he looked at me like I had lost my mind when I suggested that. he had valid points though so I can't fault him.

split rail won't stop the stuff from creeping into the beds because it isn't on the ground.
it will also make it more difficult to cut the stuff down that does come up under it.
it would be very expensive to buy enough material to do all the sections and would look odd in some spots.
would require holes for post being done and that could be impossible with tree roots in some places.
you (meaning me) won't let me rent an auger again. (he is totally right about that as his last rental resulted in a trip to er for stitches in his upper arm!)

I am really liking the sticks cause here they are free, got plenty of them and the renew them selves almost daily lol, especially with the storms!

LOL Hope you can sell him on the sticks, because I got the impression he wanted something more "attractive" I had to grit my teeth when my hubby insisted on raking leaves in my ''leafy woodland casual under the trees" bed. Seriously, nothing would grow easily there with all the shade and roots so I was trying to keep the natural leaf and stick "mulch"

he might want more attractive but he doesn't want to pay for it lol!

I have finally (I think) convinced him that it is ok to mulch the leaves and put them back on the flower beds! I will know for sure this fall if it sank in or not lol!