Climbing new heights….great ideas for a small London garden

Now we’re talking….Trellis. Personally I hate it. It always remind me of a garden stocked fresh from the garden centre or out of the yard at B&Q. It seems so unimaginative and to get climbers to cover it can take years with a hit and miss result at the end. Therefore anything which can be substituted for trellis on fencing always grabs my attention. When working in small London gardens privacy is often an issue, either from the neighbours or from the street.

By-laws dictate that solid boundaries, including fencing, must be a maximum of 2m high from your ground level (this can vary from site to site, so do double check with your Local Authority) but open boundaries that let light through, such as wire fencing or trellis, can be higher, so trellis is often a popular solution to boundary problems.

However, occasionally I find something that works well in a small London garden and does the job of trellis in a more sophisticated manner. This gorgeous custom metal screen made by GH Designs was ‘designed to offer privacy without closing off the view to this Garden Cottage. The Custom Metal Screen needed to integrate with the textures and shapes of the existing G.H. Designed garden. The Custom Metal Screen can be reproduced in any size and metal. Originally designed for residential property in Palo Alto, California’

Although it would probably be cost preclusive for most UK clients to commission a piece directly from the USA it is a great idea from which to draw inspiration and you could almost certainly find a metal worker to create something similar closer to home.