Plant to mask smell of next doors dog pee/poo

[ihavenoplans]

Next door have two large dogs which spend a lot of time in their garden. Unfortunately the neighbours don’t clear up the mess regularly (not been scooped in more than a month) and since getting a new female dog in the summer, the smell of urine is eye watering when we sit in our garden.

Any suggestions what can be planted along that side of the garden to mask the smell? Our garden is mostly grass and is north facing. I’ve ordered citronella oil to sprinkle on our side of the fence to see if that will deter them.

Thanks for any advice

That sounds awful - for the dogs as well. I think you should report them to the council - environmental health or something?

Unfortunately there arent any plants that produce scented flowers all summer long - and those that do im not sure would be able to reduce a stench like that Coming from next door.

Have you spoken to them about the smell?

There’s lots of beautifully scented plants and careful planting could mean almost year round scent -but I agree with a PP, even a garden exclusively made up of strong scented plants like certain roses, buddleja, sweet alyssum, honeysuckle, scented pinks etc probably won’t be strong enough to adequately mask such a horrendous stench.
Environmental health would be my next move.

Thanks very much :) I'll have a look into these. I was already thinking of honeysuckle, so thats good. I'm not a great gardener, so fingers crossed.

Totally agree, it's awful for the dogs. I feel really sorry for them and couldn't disguise my surprise (understatement) when they tried to show off their new puppy in the summer time.

I emailed environmental health last night, so will see if they can help at all.

Thanks again for these suggestions.

I’ll warn you honeysuckle can be late to flower, as in it can be 2 - 3 years after planting to see flowers.
Mature honeysuckle plants may flower faster if you can find them rather than the typical baby plants in the 9cm nursery pots in most supermarkets and garden centres.

If you buy ‘winter honeysuckle fragrantissma’ that is a large shrub/small tree and flowers December to March then ‘honeysuckle belgica’ which is the traditional vining type flowers may to July and if you plant a ‘honeysuckle serotina’ (another vining type) with that, that flowers from July to September.
So it’s only April, October, November that you’d be without honeysuckle.

Repeat flowering roses are May to September/October.
Make sure you get a strongly scented one as lots of roses have no or very faint scent.

Buddleja is later flowering, July I think to frost.
Again make sure you buy a strongly scented one.

Sweet alyssum, if you get a self seeding variety like ‘carpet of snow’ I find that flowers almost year round.
Pull up the old dead brown ones (they only live a year), they should drop loads of seeds giving you a carpet of baby plants but you can sow some more seed to fill any bare areas.

evening-scented stock has a very lovely and strong smell summer evenings. It's an annual grown from seed. Maybe you could accidentally chuck some over the fence?

Daphne odora is a shrub that also has a lovely smell, late winter / early spring for that one.

These all seem like very long term solutions though - I think you may need to consider burning candles/incense if the smell is that strong

No reply from Env Health yet. I've bought incense, but we haven't tried it yet as the weather hasn't been great here, so we've not used the garden much.

Borderstotheleftofme Thanks for the info, I never realised there were so many options with honeysuckle.

Loving all the plant ideas, thanks.

The 4 o’clock plant smells lovely and grows well from seed.

If you can't remove the source of the smell then the best way of combating it is to put something strong but nice just under your noise - diluted aromatherapy oil or similar.

You need a friend with a booming voice to visit when neighbours are home and stand out in the garden loudly monologuing: 'good god ihavenoplans what is that stink, it seems to be coming from over there, bloody hell ihavenoplans have your neighbours got a drain problem, really? it's dog muck? how utterly disgusting, I don't know how you all stand it, urgh, jeez, the whole place smells of shit...' and so on.