As more people live in big cities closer together, outdoor privacy has become impossible for many to enjoy. Even those living in their apartments, lofts, and condos with an outdoor space can benefit from a way to screen their home, whether to protect them from prying eyes, create a sense of intimacy, or block out unsightly views. The top landscape architects in the city of Sacramento can provide many ways of shielding your private space with hardscaping or plants.
Privacy Challenges
First, the top landscape architects in Sacramento will evaluate your space to determine what type of screening is necessary. It may include:
- Blocking a neighbor’s second-story window from looking down into your backyard.
- Creating separation between a neighboring yard
- Designing a buffer from a nearby public space like a bustling sidewalk or street.
- Hiding an unsightly view
- Creating privacy between garden areas like patio, hot tub, or deck
- Defining a safe haven for children and pets to play
- Providing security from intruders
Types of Privacy Barriers
Hardscape Barriers
These include walls like stacked stone, brick, metal, concrete, cinder or masonry block; solid fencing or fencing with openings to allow light in with materials like bamboo, wood, metal, vinyl, wire mesh, or composites; outbuildings like a shed or greenhouse, soil berm to elevate the landscape, patio umbrella for an outdoor seating area; gate for a driveway, backyard, or side yard; garden structure such as trellis, pergola, arbor, or privacy roof; canopy for a deck or patio that can also provide shade and shelter from rain; screening like lattice or slatted panel that allow light in; and even fabrics like outdoor-friendly curtains.
Living Barriers
These have added benefits of absorbing traffic and other noises, providing shelter and food for wildlife, reducing dust, and blocking the wind. For screening, you can consider plants like:
- Shrubs: As a formal or informal hedging to create a living wall.
- Trees provide a canopy from overhead or to the side and can also be planted in a row and placed into a wall-like form.
- Combining plants like vines, shrubs, trees, and perennials with different heights and shapes creates a layered buffer zone.
- Vines can be grown in a pergola, arbor, or trellis.
- Ornamental grasses and other perennial plants provide seclusion while allowing light and air circulation.
Combination barriers
You can create a mixture of different privacy barriers for an eclectic look, like a wall topped by a fence or a fence combined with a tree.
Factors to Consider When Designing a Privacy Garden
- Style: choose hardscape materials and plants to complement the style of your home.
- Scale: Select privacy barriers that are in scale with the space.
- Light: consider whether a privacy solution will create too much shade in your yard or cast a shadow over a vegetable garden, swimming pool, and other areas requiring full sun.
- Cost: look for solutions that fit your budget and plants and materials that will be durable.
- Avoid overdoing: avoid adding too many privacy barriers and too large barriers, as it can make the yard feel boxed in. You may use a variety of barriers that can help make an area feel more spacious.
- Local rules: make sure you check for local building codes or HOA rules that have their specifications for outbuilding size, fence height, and property line setbacks.
- Ask the Experts: consulting with a landscape designer, contractor, or architect is best.
When choosing plants for your private space, consider factors like:
- Growing habits and conditions: consider the soil, light, mature size, and maintenance required.
- Determine whether the tree you choose will become a problem for your neighbors, whether it will have overhanging branches that cause leaf litter in your neighbor’s yard, or whether the hedge needs to be regularly pruned on your neighbor’s side.
- Avoid long-term damage: if the tree is planted in the wrong spot, the tree’s root system or other large plants may eventually create structural damage to your home. Though bamboo is often used as screening, its roots need to be contained in a sturdy barrier to prevent spreading or damage.
- Maintenance: Remember that a well-built fence is easier to maintain than a hedge, which requires regular pruning. So ensure easy access is provided from all sides for plants that need pruning.
- Add security: you may also choose prickly plants like hawthorn or holly to deter would-be intruders and ensure that your privacy options do not give intruders places to hide.
Adding Finishing Touches
- Allow light in: A slatted or lattice fence or gate with openings can lend privacy while allowing some light in and offering glimpses of the view beyond.
- Soften the hardscape barriers: you may adorn wooden fencing, lattice panels, and other structures with fast-growing vines, garden beds, hanging baskets, or potted plants. This will make them feel more integrated into the landscape. Select vines that will not overwhelm or destroy the structure.
To Sum Up
These points will help you create a cozy, intimate, private space in your landscape. You can take help from landscape designers to get the best tips.
