The Worst Garden Ever: The Challenges
This garden section, running about 100 feet long, has been an eyesore for many years. It's also so large that I didn't have nearly enough of my plastic plants to cover the whole area. If you look on the right, you'll see some of the original ground cover that existed probably many years ago.
What you can't see here are the extremely tall trees that grew up to block the sunlight and prevent anything from growing in this area. To make matters worse, the land slants, allowing nutrients to slide down, unabsorbed by the dirt, not to mention water loss. As if that didn't make it hard enough, there's been a pestilence attack on Oleanders in this area and many of those plants died (which had been on both sides of the chain link fence) causing a real loss of privacy and adds to an already extremely ugly driveway garden area.
What you can't see here are the extremely tall trees that grew up to block the sunlight and prevent anything from growing in this area. To make matters worse, the land slants, allowing nutrients to slide down, unabsorbed by the dirt, not to mention water loss. As if that didn't make it hard enough, there's been a pestilence attack on Oleanders in this area and many of those plants died (which had been on both sides of the chain link fence) causing a real loss of privacy and adds to an already extremely ugly driveway garden area.
Where Did All The Green Plants Go?
The photo on the left gives you a much clearer idea of the enormous challenge to making this driveway look decent. The slanting ground area used to be covered beautifully with ice plants in gorgeous colors. The large tree roots from the now very large trees only serve to make it more difficult to plant anything in this area again. We have tried just about everything over the years to make this area both healthier for plant life and more attractive as well.
Add to all that and this is one of the toughest jobs we've ever faced. The challenge here is how to improve this whole long, long garden/driveway area without doing any real structure or tree work. And gain some of lost privacy to this property. Exterior home improvement at its most challenging.
Add to all that and this is one of the toughest jobs we've ever faced. The challenge here is how to improve this whole long, long garden/driveway area without doing any real structure or tree work. And gain some of lost privacy to this property. Exterior home improvement at its most challenging.
Let's Review The Challenges in This Garden and Driveway:
Challenge #1: Loss of Privacy: This has been a significant problem since this neighborhood has a lot of dogs. Since there's no longer a buffer available from all the plants that have died, dog barking has increased especially since the dogs can now also SEE all the people walking down the the driveway next door. Add to that the general noise that you get from noisy neighbors and you'll understand why the privacy issue has been listed as number one here.
Problem #1: Privacy
While the colors on this are slightly altered from their real colors, you'll see that I started using those plastic slats to fill in this chain link fence. Knowing this area is so large, I realized that it would take me several months to get slats in all the chain link fence sections, so I started with this first.
Now, as many of you know, these plastic slats are a seriously off color of either kelly green or deep turquoise. Since the first kind of slat I'd ordered was turquoise and sold out, I was left with only kelly green ones to complete the fence. How did I solve that problem? Spray paint of course! Yes, once I'd gotten the slats in place, I proceeded to spray paint the entire plastic fence. Sounds a bit crazy, I know, but a far better solution than living with an even uglier driveway. More on this shortly.
Now, as many of you know, these plastic slats are a seriously off color of either kelly green or deep turquoise. Since the first kind of slat I'd ordered was turquoise and sold out, I was left with only kelly green ones to complete the fence. How did I solve that problem? Spray paint of course! Yes, once I'd gotten the slats in place, I proceeded to spray paint the entire plastic fence. Sounds a bit crazy, I know, but a far better solution than living with an even uglier driveway. More on this shortly.
Before Photo: Loss of Privacy
This photo gives you a clearer idea of how much privacy was lost. It may be a bit hard to see but essentially, you can see straight thru this fence into the driveway next door. This area was once lush and very inviting. The chain link fence here is quite stable so replacing it with something more private just wasn't practical. Another, cost effective, solution was needed.