AIBU to do whatever I like to my fence?

[SunnaStrangeInTheNeighbourhood]

Or rather is DH BU?

Last summer we replaced our tatty 6ft fence with a brand new one. It's a very long garden and that side was looking horribly bare. We have planted shrubs and flowers in beds down the side but it was still looking a bit naked because we'd had to remove a lot of established bushes and shrubs to do the fence.

DH scrounged was given some lightweight barbed wire left over from a friend's project and has been hammering it to the fence along the top and in loops and curls up and down with the intention of growing some climbing plants along it. It will also make it harder for random burglars to climb over the fence, he said. 3 years ago a potential burglar scaled all the fences down the lane and tried all the back doors, so it's not entirely silly to think it could happen.

NDN is worried about his cat getting hurt. Said cat hardly ever comes in our garden because we shout at it or squirt it with water. Until we moved in it had used it as an outside toilet. 4 years of discouragement means we hardly see it any more.

Cats aren't stupid so I think it may have encountered barbed wire before (we live in a village surround by farm land) and will have learned to avoid it or tiptoe round it. He wants us to remove it but "doesn't want to fall out over it". Dh has said he doesn't want to fall out either but it's staying.

NDN's wife says he's being ridiculous. He is isn't he?

Nothing says class like a barbed wire fence. It's the artful draping that changes it from tacky to naice of course.

The cops I've seen around the village wouldn't be able to scale a 6ft fence. It took them 3 days to knock on the door and ask about the potential burglar in our gardens.

i think people seem stuck on the idea you've got this looped along the top of your fence like some fort knox/prison.

from your posts, i'm getting this is along the length of the fence, but doesn't go up above the top?

not best for the flowers, but not the horrendous think most people are making it out to be either. you'd be better off buying some gardening wire and doing it with that instead!

That's it exactly. The bit he's done is nailed to the front of the fence, starting at the bottom. One bit of it goes up to the top then down again and along a bit. Then back down to the bottom.

Nothing is visible from the NDN's side.

OP, Deepest apologies for the Daily Mail link but is THIS your Garden.

barbed wire seems quite the in thing in garden design.

If it's not visible to your neighbour how does he know it's there?

I'm not letting DH see that, it may give him ideas. NDN heard the hammering and he asked DH what he was doing, that's how he knows.

DH proudly told him of his scheme and he expressed concerns about his cat.

Sunna - if it was solely up to you, would you ever have even thought of using barbed wire?

Have you ever heard of any gardener using barbed wire as a method of training plants?

Apart from the fact that he got it free, why does DH think this is a good idea? Proper wire for training plants costs a few pounds and won't kill the plants or lacerate the gardener. Is he really so obsessive that he won't spend a fiver and do the job properly instead of botching it and pissing off the neighbours in the process?

You know DH has a problem- you said you won't let him bring his junk into the house. Using the barbed wire in this way is really peculiar and more than a little perverse.

Cheap green netting would have been better as I wouldn't fancy pruning my climbing plants and ripping my hand on barbed wire.

I wouldn't use it. And I think he's going off the idea. A friend was getting rid of it and DH was "inspired". To be fair a lot of his "found objects" in the garden are ok.

We aren't hard up but DH likes a bargain or a freebie. Mostly it works out fine. This time not so much.

I've done something similar with a fence but I used wire field fencing (I'm sorry I don't know what It's called, the sort of thing often seen around school fields)

It's green and it looks quite nice blended in with the hedge, which took no time at all to grow, and we now have crawling plants as well. We got it VERY cheap, just by asking local gardeners!

I don't think barbed wire's a good idea and much as I too love a freebie, I'm glad your DH is beginning to go off it. Would be awful if somebody got hurt.

I'm glad he's going off the idea!

I can't help but wonder, if he's that attached to freebies, what would be the worst possible thing he'd keep? If barbed wire didn't set off a 'Hmm, maybe I shouldn't take this' response until other people got involved, then how far would he go?

I'm picturing someone offering him an unexploded, possibly live WWII bomb and him thinking 'Ooh, that would make a lovely backdrop for my begonias.'

Yabu
small birds like to shelter in creeping plants as do other wildlife.
it will be a complete pita to try to cut back said plants
it will be a pita to try to treat or repaint the fence
And if you ever come to sell the house you would have to tell them as the potential for injury to them or their children would be high and i would imagine most buyers would want you to remove it and repair any damage before they agreed to the sale, which would end up costing you more in time and money than savings om your freebie barbed wire

Yabu and apparently ok with putting a cat at risk of serious injury.

We have lots of barbed wire up where I work. We have to have signs up though to warn people.

So, the cat comes in your garden - climbing carefully through the barbed wire - and you blast it with your super-soaker water pistol, as you have already admitted doing. (Fine, no problem with spraying a cat, in the absence of barbed wire.) However, the water spray causes the cat, in a panic, to make a mad dash for the fence, through the concealed barbed wire... aargh! Presumably you also have foxes in the vicinity?

OP: AIBU?
MN: YABVU.
OP: No, I'm not

Are you on glue?

soontobe and mitzi I am in agreement with. Whether you like cats or not, to have barbed wire you're agreeing with potentially causing them a lot of pain and distress, which I do not find myself able to be okay with.

Mitzi, please read the thread properly. I have said several times I wouldn't do it. Maybe you are on glue and unable to read because of the fumes.

DH has traded the barbed wire with the farmer for some cobbles recently dug out of his yard. The cobbles are going to be a border for the flower beds.

The barbed wire won't be going far, the farmer is going to use it on the rusty fence over the back to replace missing bits.

Glad to hear it OP. It was a terrible idea.

Hats off to you remaining so composed on this thread.

It was always perfectly clear that:

• it wasn't your idea in the first place
• the barbed wire wasn't along the top of the fence
• there is already barbed wire on the far side of one of your boundary fence
• only one half of the couple next door was against the idea

and

• that early on you could see it was worth getting DH to take it down.

However; the basic facts of a thread never usually get in the way of the constant repetitive frothers, ususally copying other posters who have also misread/not bothered to read the thread

Thanks, fluffy.

I would absolutely HATE it if my neighbour did this. Have some consideration. And as a landscape professional I echo other posters in saying this is a terrible idea to use this to support climbing plants. You will never be able to use a mechanical hedge trimmer or other powered tool. The loops of barbed wire are no way strong enough to support a wisteria. Wisteria takes hundreds of years to grow big. Just. Don't. Do. It.
And YABU

As a good disguise for rather bare, new fencing, have you seen those large rolls of bamboo sticks, hazel withies or reeds? They come in different heights, and you just roll them out along your fence and attach with U nails. It looks very natural, covers a multitude of sins and you can train plants up the stuff no bother. Also it's safe for wildlife/children and easy to detach for fence maintenance.

Balaboosta, you could have saved yourself all that typing if only you'd bothered to actually read the thread.

Hi OP

If you are looking for some plants to discourage intruders, can I suggest:

Holly
Ivy
Blackthorn
Hawthorn
Firethorn
Climbing rose

I think all are native and would be great for bees and butterflies.