Barrier features add interest to any landscape.
Barriers act as frames to set off areas of color, texture or function within a well-designed landscape. Whether hedges, fences, walls or walkways, barriers contain and define decorative elements of a landscape design, such as flower beds, greenswards, groves, streams and decks. Blending all these elements to produce a coherent look and feel throughout your landscape can be challenging, but thankfully, we have a wide range of materials from which to create our barriers. Does this Spark an idea?
Fences
Fences can be standard chain-link, picket fences or wood panel fences. If you're interested more in looks than in physical exclusion, log rail fences can provide a dramatic barrier line across your landscape. Rails can be made into snake rail fences, split rail fences and a wide variety of other variations on the split rail design. Wrought iron fences are more expensive but create a more formal look for your garden, especially with ornamental gates and posts.
Walls
Freestanding stone walls with ivy create a softer-looking barrier. Brick, block and poured retaining walls last a very long time, which offsets the higher cost of construction. Landscape timber retaining walls give your landscape a rustic look. Newer, stackable, shaped concrete wall blocks interlock with one another, allowing you to create dynamic changes in elevation along hillsides and slopes without having to use mortar. Another new wall building material is the stackable concrete bag wall. All you have to do is stack layers of bags of fast-setting concrete mix, alternating the ends from row to row like brickwork. When completed, just turn a sprinkler on the wall and, as the bags become saturated, the concrete in the bags will set up. Once cured, peel the paper off the bags, and it leaves a solid concrete wall that looks like a rows of rounded stones.
Decks and Patios
Treated lumber makes for beautiful wooden decks and patios. Concrete may be a bit more costly and labor-intensive, but concrete patios and decks are low-maintenance and long-lasting. Concrete flagstones can be laid over a flat sandy bed with or without mortar and provide a stable deck surface with less work than a solid slab. Sand sprinkled into the cracks between the blocks can brace the blocks, making them more stable. Use dirt instead of sand and sprinkle grass seed, and you'll soon have a weathered concrete block deck with grass growing between the cracks.
Walkways
Concrete curbs, landscape timbers, shaped concrete blocks or rows of rocks set in trenches alongside the path can be used to contain sand, river rocks or pea gravel filler to make a nice, crunchy path through the garden. Another quick way to lay a barrier path is to set your borders, then pour concrete mix between the borders. Sprinkle the dry concrete with water until it's saturated, then let it set up, creating a natural-looking path.
Beds
To set off flower beds, barriers can be anything from simple plastic strip barriers to decorative concrete blocks. Prefab concrete edging comes with scalloped tops, smooth arcs and flat edges. They come in straight and curved lengths that can be strung end to end. Old bricks can be laid flat, on edge or piled at an angle one on the other along the edge of the flower bed. Landscape timbers partially buried into the dirt also make an effective barrier. Rocks partially buried lining the flower bed create a rough natural border. A poured concrete curb provides a more formal edge to a swath of flowers. Short plastic and wooden picket fence-like border sections are widely available at home and garden centers.
Curbs
Concrete curb extruding machines allow you to lay straight or curved or virtually any shape you want simply by dragging the machine where you want the curb to go. The curbs are shaped by replaceable templates inserted into the machine. Drag the machine in a circle as you extrude concrete and you have a flower bed. You can fill it with dirt, mulch and plant it full of flowers. You can also pour concrete shapes and forms using traditional wooden forms or using concrete shaping tools to create custom barriers that define your landscape zones.
Weed Barriers
Plastic sheeting or landscape weed barrier cloth can be laid down under topsoil and mulch to hold back weeds from your planting areas. Barrier strips of mulch materials like pine and cedar bark, shredded rubber tires and recycled plastic can act as a physical barrier against weeds and stray vegetation.
Vegetation
Barriers don't have to be artificial. Hedges, shrubs, swaths of ivy and stands of flowers and plants can act as visual barriers in your landscape. Choose plants for barrier rows that are comfortable growing in close proximity to one another.
Water
Ponds, stream beds or artificial waterfalls make excellent barriers separating colors, textures and heights of landscape features. Pond kits, pumps, plastic and fiberglass water basins are readily available at landscaper, home and garden supply stores.
Tags: your landscape, concrete wall, rail fences, concrete blocks, flower beds, forms using
