Wildlife friendly suggestions for bare fences....
BugFriendlyGardener
Posts: 8
Got a bare fence ? perhaps behind a narrow border or lawn.....
no.1 : Try growing raspberries if you've never done so before. Best to put a framework of wire on the fence. I use 3 strands. Raspberry canes are cheaply bought or if you know someone growing them already you can get offshoots from them for free. Don't plant them too close to the base of the fence and you'll have something very beneficial to bees and then get a crop for yourself or the birds.
no. 2 : For supporting climbers and to create an additional wildlife habitat...put up 2" square plastic mesh so that if sits about 4" away from the fence. I use long vine-eyes in the posts and in the middle of the panels (depending on the type of panel) I put small wooden platforms. This helps support the mesh and when your ivy etc are established, gives birds are starting point for nesting. Wrens and titsespecially like foraging in the gap between the fence panel and the mesh 'screen',
Posts
My daughter had a bare mesh fence (to keep the children in!) and she has planted a mixture of shrubs, flowering, berry bearing, evergreen and deciduous (not all at once!). She ordered cheaply from the internet a few years ago and now it looks great and houses many birds.
I have a bare fence and am thinking of putting a pyracantha up it and training it to go along in tendrils. very bird friendly I think. Is it right that pyracantha doesn't need support?
Pyracantha berries are loved by birds, but is very very spiny and it doesn't have tendrils. I have one that doesn't have support, but I didn't prune it for a few years and it grew enourmous and because it's so vicious it's been difficult to get it back under control.
I have grown in one part to cover a boring fence a evergreen plant that came from a flower arrangement against it.I think its a kind of variegated privet.any how it grew
espaliered across the fence on its own and I just clipped it to keep it neat and in line and it makes a good cover.