Bright Ideas to Provide Quick Garden Privacy

In rural areas, privacy in your yard is often taken for granted. But residents of more densely populated areas might consider it a hard-to-attain luxury. In order to feel comfortable sitting and eating outdoors in your own garden you need to know that there are places where you can relax without being overlooked by neighbours or passers-by. Sometimes all that is required is a strategically placed tree. Alternatively there are a number of easy solutions, some seasonal, others permanent. Follow these suggestions from design experts to gain privacy and block unsightly views.

1. Quick screens

You can create privacy quickly and inexpensively, using plants and temporary frames.
Some have the bonus of adding color and fragrance to the terrace or may be dual purpose, screening the patio with an edible crop like runner beans. Annual flowering climbers such as canary creeper (tropaeolum peregrinum) are particularly speedy.

2. Flower line

A row of identically planted containers on top of a retaining wall creates an informal flowering hedge.

3. Pots on wheels

Bamboos like phyllostachys aurea and fargesia nitida in troughs or pots on wheeled bases provide handy, mobile screens.

Make a bamboo frame prepare the ground next to paving and add homemade compost to retain moisture. Erect the frame, plant, and then water.

4. Tomato planters

Choosing a sunny, sheltered spot, plant a line of cordon tomatoes, acclimatized to outdoor conditions, about 18in apart. Good varieties include 'gardener's delight' and 'sweet 100'. Deep, heavy troughs provide more stability and better growing conditions than growing bags. Insert expanding trellis and bamboo canes for support. Tie new growth in regularly.

Screening solutions can make permanent patio or terrace features and be highly decorative as well as functional. The ideas below show how you can create privacy without making an area feel dark or cut off from the rest of the garden.

5. Colorful sails

Once you had to order pull-out triangular awnings from sailmakers and ship's chandlers, but white or colored treated- fabric patio sails are now widely available in garden centers and online.

6. Stained-glass panels

This screen is made from a number of stained-glass strips, but you could purchase old stained-glass windows from reclamation yards to incorporate into a conventional trellis partition

7. Light screens

Made from translucent polypropylene and wood, these off-the-peg panels are perfect for creating a room-like quality, especially when incorporated into a pergola. Because they let in so much light you can use them as dividers in shady courtyards.

8. Fence portholes

Some trellis and fence manufacturers make panels with window-like apertures that screen effectively but allow glimpsed views through to the garden or landscape beyond. Make your own by cutting a rectangular window in trellis and framing it with wood.