Covering an ugly wall

[Misty9]

Our neighbours garage forms part of our boundary and can be seen from our garden; fine, it's lovely red brick. But they extended their garage with ugly grey breezeblock and that's a large part of our garden boundary (2.8mx2.8m). After 4 years I'm fed up with looking at it in summer when we're out there a lot, so what can I do to cover/screen it?

I was going to put trellis up it but have read that's a no no as it's not our wall. We've bought honeysuckle plants but need some way of helping them climb. We could erect fence posts and trellis on our side, but it's patio and would be a pain to sink fence posts.

The neighbours actually have a huge old wisteria plant which hangs over this wall considerably - so I wondered about an arbour seat or something to prop up the wisteria and partly cover the wall? Or something else entirely?!

Could you paint it white and plant some big shrubs in front of it? Photinia tend to be good value for money if you want them big.

I did consider painting it but apparently breeze block is a bastard to paint as it absorbs tons of the stuff. Also, I didn't think I was allowed to do anything to the actual wall without neighbours permission?

You can put up a fence completely on your own land up to 2m high in front of the block work. Don't attach anything to the wall but what you do on your own land is up to you. You will only lose about 9-12 ins so it's worth it.

Oh yes. Plant a beech hedge or make a border with shrubs.

The arbour sounds nice or you could build free standing boxes / raised beds - thinking 2 ft high by 12-18 inches wide and as long as you want, trellis attached to the back of your boxes and grow climbers in those, spring bulbs /annuals/ herbs / in front of the climbers

You can also get large freestanding pots and add bamboos / patio sized fruit trees etc and place in front of the wall

agrin you're a genius! I've actually already built a massive planter for the honeysuckle but it hadn't occurred to me to attach the trellis to the back of it!

I like the idea of bamboo plants in pots too but they're quite pricey I think. The other thing I've seen is metal bronze coloured screens, with cut outs to make a feature of them. But I'm not sure how to sink fence posts into concrete/patio so I think the trellis planter is the way to go.