Ideas needed for cheap front garden (minus dog poo)

[bunny2]

I hope someone here can help. We have a very small frontage to our house (about 1.5 metres deep) and it has a small border running along the front of the house. I was going to plant some pretty flowers but the neighbourhood dogs keep pooing on it. My mother has suggested paving it over but we are on a very tight budget, is there a Mumsnetter out there who can offer some advice or ideas?

What can I do to stop dogs pooing in our (very small) front garden? My mother has suggested paving it over but this sounds expensive. Any ideas please ...???

Carried away posting to myself. How sad am I?

How about planting something that the dogs won't like? A rose hedge for example - would look lovely in the summer and the dogs will keep away. And if the border runs along the house wall you could even plant a climber at one end and train it up the wall...

A gate?

bunny, our front patch is a similar size, we have had grass for years but by this summer it had degenerated into a baby meadow full of moss, daisies and dreaded dandelions so we have dug it up (when I say "we"....) and are about to gravel it - gravel is pretty cheap and looks nice and you can arrange some pots on it. (You need to put a membrane thing down first to stop weeds growing up through the gravel.)

We don't have the dog poo problem as we have a (rusty) wroughtiron fence and gate - I'm assuming yours is actually open at the front? You may well still have the poo problem but not on the flowers. You can buy stuff to repel animals, once the area is clean and doesn't smell they may go somewhere else.

HTH!

We had a gravel garden plus wall plus gate and cats still pooed in it . I shovelled it all up in the end and found paving slabs with small flowerbeds underneath!

Agree aboout planting something prickly like rose hedging to deter dogs

Bunny2 I like your first three entries - made me smile I must try it when mine don't get a response! I would have thought princesspeaheads idea was a good one how about checking out the neighbours frontage and seeing what works for them?

54321, I'd had a few drinks when I posted!

Thanks for the ideas, Jahn you rightly assume we are open at the front, we are thinking of having a brick wall built but it is, apparently v. expensive. Dont know why, maybe I'll try to do one myself, second thoughts perhaps not! I have heard gravel is a magnet or cats (think cat litter)which is a pity as I like the gravel effect. I like the idea of thorny roses stinging the buggers so might look into that one. Soupdragon, did you lay the paving stones on top of whatever was already there or did you put hardcore down first?

How about some slate chips (I think B&Q sell them) and some ornamental grasses (also at B&Q). I've got a pretty purplish one in a pot that is pretty sharp on the edges and probably would keep dogs away. It also looks good all year round.

aha, the architect talks! sounds very stylish - I'd look into sofiaames suggestion if I were you bunny2..

thanks... and it fits into my poor dh's constant lament as we renovate our house and I pick the weird, wonderful, avant-garde finishes for our house...."Why can't you just get it at B&Q???"

how about a mexican garden?gravel and lots of cactuses of different sizes,they`ll keep the dogs away

Thanks SofiaAmes. I told my Mum about your idea and she pointed out a house nearby that uses slate chips, it looks really good so I shall investigate at B&Q. Whymummy, I love the cactus idea too, I love the shapes of some succulents, we had them when we lived in Spain. Not sure about the gravel though, dont cats like pooing on it? (I'm poo phobic).

bunny, gravel comes in different sizes (IYSWIM) - if you get stuff like small beach pebbles it's nothing like cat litter and I think it would hurt their poor ickle paws if they started scratching at it.

In our backyard we have flowerbeds, which the neighbours' cats regard as lovely big litter trays, and we also have a gravelled area - it has only once been poo'd on and that was when the soil in the beds was inaccessible, covered with bits of old trellis, but obviously the cat had left it until the last minute and couldn't wait. It has not been poo'd on at any other time. So if you get biggish stones, or Sofia's slate chips (which sound nice and sharp!) cats shouldn't be a problem.

Dunno about dogs though - they're not bothered about needing to scrape at the ground, are they? Could you put a fence up instead of a wall? Or else get a wall built out of those decorative concrete blocks (you know, the ones with cut-out patterns?) that wouldn't cost nearly as much as an actual brick wall. (You'll still need a gate though.)

Or an electric fence???

Or you could do what my mother did with the lemons (calif) growing in her front garden that people kept picking. She put a sign saying, "Please don't pick, just sprayed with POISON" It wasn't true, but people stopped picking them. Maybe people wont let their dogs poo in your front garden if they think there is poison there.

Just as well I read the whole message sofiaames, I was just thinking, "how would the dogs be able to read it?"!

i just remember i saw in a catalogue that they sold a product that smell like lions poo to keep cats and dogs off your garden,ha,ha how would cats and dogs now what lion`s poo smells like???

my spelling`s getting worse

Thanks for more suggestions. Whymummy, do you know what lion poos smell like? I would imagine like very strong cat poo

In Asda, I saw some pepper powder that might be worth a try.

bunny, I've tried the pepper, it didn't work for me but there is also some gel stuff, tends to be blue or green, you squeeze the bottle and little blobby bits squelch over your garden, that did seem to be more effective but you do have to clean the area completely first (or so it says on the bottle).

I read somewhere else that you shouldn't use bleach (I think it was bleach) as that attracts them more - have also read that cats don't like the smell of vinegar so you could try sprinkling that?