Shoestring budget. How can I make this space feel less overlooked?

ChasingtheWelshdream

We’ve just shifted our garden furniture round to make everything flow better.  But now I’m sitting on the sofa feeling rather overlooked. (Just noticed the washing line, pleas ignore that!) 

Other than prohibitively expensive trees, what could I use to screen off the windows of these two houses? The green house feels much closer than it looks in the photo. 

This area is on the North end of the garden, and the bed/fence shown faces East and has always been a difficult place to get things to grow. Things just tend to be sickly in that particular spot.

We have a very tight budget but I’d like to get something to grow enough within a couple of years. Or any other ideas?

gwynlas

Are you not wanting to see those windows or prevent people at windows seeing you? You should be able to source posts and screens, wire mesh would do, that you can attach quick growing climbers to perhaps placed on the diagonal. Look at the view from when you are sitting down on the sofa. A more expensive option might be a pergola,

twopenny

The green house is easy. I've used the pink, summer flowering Jasmine which grows like Topsy - it's finally got white Jasmine and a clematis growing through it. They grow to the top of the fence and beyond.

It's easy to trim tidy too.

However you have a neighbour with open trellis and the plants will go through there to some extent. If you have a nice neighbour offer to go in and trim it that side. A 10min job.

All plants came from Morrisons @ £2 each except for the white jasmine which was a cutting.

The house adjacent to yours is going to need something much higher.

I think making a gazebo or just posts and some trellis is the quickest way. £6 a post. Cane trellis is cheaper than the wood one by some considerable margin. Can be fastened with wire.

-taff

Get yourself som climbers and some bamboo poles, the kind you grow beans up, the longest ones you can find and mash up a kind of trellis that protrudes above the fence. The climbers can grow up the trellis already there and then go a bit further. If you site the poles a foot or slightly less away from the fence it won't annoy the neighbours either.

Go for something quick growing for now, montana clematis or even a passion flower. You might be private by the end of the summer but next year they'll have a head start.

Look on wowcher or groupon for deals on trees, I got a couple of cypresses, four foot tall for thrity quid a while ago but they grow fast. Also join a fb gardening group that's local to you and see what people are giving away or ask them for stuff and see what happens...

YoungBlueEyes

For instant privacy while you've got stuff growing, how about those expandable plastic trellises? They're already covered in leaves and flowers so they'd give you a bit of screening from the off. 

Is the pic you've taken the direction you'd be facing when you're sat out? At this time of year you'll still get some sun if you were sat against the fence (so facing the camera), then the fence would do half the work for you. Could you create something like a little hut/shelter/pergola - something with an over head part to it, plastic trellis laid flat would work as a temp measure - then you'd be hidden away entirely  

ChasingtheWelshdream

Thank you all, we just seem to find not much grows in that corner. I did have a lovely clematis montana covering all that corner, but it just decided to die this year. No idea why.

DH has decided to make a little pergola with a couple of fence posts. :-)

-taff

Might have been clematis wilt...A friends four died last year with it.

Working_Mum

Have you thought about posting a "Wanted" item on Freecycle?? We often give plants away via Freecycle and I see plants/trees and pots etc being offered. There may be some useful old wood or something you can use to brighten things up. I recently dismantled a York stone wall and re-purposed it in my garden.

twopenny

Clematis aren't sturdy plants. They can be pickey about conditions.

I got some from Morrisons for £2 that are still going 3yrs on but I don't expect them to last forever. I've lost the good ones.

Some are better than others. I found the winter flowering one Jingle Bells from a GC is doing well.

Now is the time to take cuttings. I gathered quite a bit of a tough black leaved one from my neighbours 'bucket' while they were trimming it