Cotswold Garden - what to do with the fencing around our garden

[sunglasses123]

Hello, we have a large garden overlooking open fields. The house is a new build and unusually the garden is large. We have a fence around the back garden and we are looking for ideas to tidy things up. We have the garden, the fence, a ditch and then the open fields. We would like to pull the garden in (I think!) as the area around the fence is looking rather scrappy.

We have recently weeded the area just beyond the fence and it took us ages to cut them down.

What can we do with neaten all of this up? We have been in the house 18 months and have a dog which cannot jump the fence! Cows come by every day in the summer but the ditch stops them hanging their heads over the fencing.

Any one got any ideas? I have enclosed a picture which hopefully will help

What a fab garden! 🤢
I love seeing beech hedging, if that’s the type of thing you want and it can easily be bake-off under control. In my GRandoarents garden they has a beech hedge with gooseberry plants in it. They co existed well.
Other than that I’d plant shrubs that will give interest all year round.

Are we talking about a couple of thousand to put in? I presume it will take a few years to grow to the height of the fence?

Ah, yes. It depends if you have a long term plan. You could plant laurels, they grow quite quickly and come in a variety of leaf types, interspersed with things like rhododendrons.

What's the ditch for, is it to stop the cows? Someone on another thread was trying to work out why there was a ditch at the end of a garden.

Gorgeous garden, I'm so jealous of the views.

I wouldn’t grow a normal hedge, it’s a gorgeous view and would be such a shame to block it off as most hedging plants grow tall eventually. If you want to box it in a bit how about something like a little red robin hedge that will only get to around 1m tall.

Hello All, Yes the ditch is to keep the cows back. There is some barbed wire as well to stop the cows literally hanging their heads over our fence (and making the dog go ballistic!)

I thought of a hedge/privet but I guess its going to take a few years to reach fence height. I agree as well that snything too small and piddly gets lost in the garden. The trees are not ours but we are allowed to trim them back which we have already.

I am originally from London and I have to say the Cotswolds are lovely and you can do London there and back in a day. It is rather middle England but very safe and you feel neighbours are looking out for each other. No one would dare try anything untoward around here. This was a new build as well in a very small development. The garden is very large but there were all sorts of planning issues so it had to be built like this. Don't intend to move tbh but if we did its the garden that would sell this house. Its never going to be immaculate unlike our neighbours because of our mad dog but its been a good move for us

Have a look on Ebay for cheap hedging, I got 100 Hawthorn whips for £30.