BRB, just change the name of this blog to “Solving Problems With Plants”. I know we promised to publish a huge collection, but the pool is still in progress. Hopefully next month we can write one big analysis of about 473 images. But back to how plants can not only hide unsightly things, they can also offer some great privacy, as we’ll show below. One of the things that contributes to making our home more walkable to the shops, parks, beach, and restaurants is that it doesn’t feel like a sprawling suburban neighborhood due to a lot smaller (you can read more about why there is a walkable neighborhood) and a small house/lot that really got our family into this the post). It feels similar to our former beach house in Cape Charles, Virginia, which taught us we don’t really mind being close to other homes. Although the houses on each side of us were almost identical, meaning many of our windows were lined up perfectly (in fact from one of the upstairs bathrooms we could see both of the neighbors’ bathrooms on either side – but thanks to the magic of the blinds it wasn’t a problem) . You can read more about the renovation of this home here. Here in Florida, our current home plot is three times larger than ours in Cape Charles (about 4,800 square feet), but about eight times smaller than the one we had in Richmond (which was roughly an acre!) It strikes us as a great balance. Not much to maintain, but still roomy enough to add a pool, work in some great outdoor rest areas, etc and not an inch of grass to mow, which might be my favorite part. We’re also in a corner here, so we’re not sandwiched between two houses like ours in Cape Charles… but on this side of the house is another house fairly close: fortunately, this house doesn’t have any windows that align perfectly with ours – and thanks The mature trees and privacy fence we added, we don’t really feel like we’re going to wave to each other from inside our homes. In fact, after living here for a while, the only spot we felt was a little more “exposed” than we wanted was one side window upstairs, above the kids art desk: hard to tell in the photo above because it explodes in the photo, but personally, the Left out of the window behind these two chairs looks out onto the neighboring house a little more than we’d like when you’re looking at it head-on (for example, when you’re sitting in the chairs at the art desk). Yes, blackout blinds could easily have done this trick, but we really enjoyed the lack of blinds on these upstairs windows because the views from this room are so beautiful, green, and secluded (you can read more about this room here in this post). We figured there must be a way to get that leafy feeling out of this window, too. So we made a plan with a capital T. What is this spell? the plants! Fortunately, our deck wraps just enough to go under this window (it literally ends at the windowsill, shown below). So we used a simple raised planter box + trellis setup to create a lush wall of green that blocks our view of the neighboring house (and theirs). First we bought this 48 it’s high planter box (it’s for sale now) and primed and painted it white to blend in with the house. The raised planter box gave the plants a good start in making them tall enough to really create privacy, and the “trellis” was actually easy to add too. It’s just 2 pieces of 2×2 wood (also painted white) that we attached to the outside of our deck railing. Then we just threaded some 1/16th steel wire between the two, cross between some evenly spaced screw eye hooks. A bit like a quick and dirty version of this wire trellis we added in our last home. The main difference here is that we did not attempt to create an organized geometric pattern for the vines to trace. Our goal here was full coverage. So we just sewed wire back and forth to create some wide X stacked on top of each other creating a sort of “wire ladder” to give the vines something to grab onto so they could easily grow to the top and fill everything and the last step was to add the stars of the show : the plants. Well, dirt. But who cares about dirt? The real stars, quite literally, are the star jasmine plants that we planted in our raised planter box, beneath our newly installed wire trellis. Jasmine does really well in our area, so we knew this would be a smart bet (it covers all fences and pergolas and smells really good). So we just drilled and untangled them from the stakes they came with, and gently wrapped them around the wire. Then along the front of the planter box, since we still had some room, we added some foxglove ferns for another layer of greenery. They also love our climate and grow to be large and stocky with no watering or high maintenance needs, which is always a plus. To be clear, we don’t water this planter box. It only rains when that happens and it grows happily on its own, which seems to be the key to us. We planted this again in the fall and hope for the best. So far, very good. Jasmine is actually taller than the trellis in some parts! We just keep an eye on it, sometimes “redirecting” some vines along a different part of the wire to help fill in some bare spots (there are a few empty areas towards the top where we’re still working on filling). Here’s another shot of how it looked from the ground… …and the other day we had a chance to go into the house next door to check things out from their perspective (it’s under construction and we are friendly with the builder). There are still some sites that need filling in, but it’s pretty cool how well they actually blocked out that window, which was perfectly visible from that point of view. So while it certainly isn’t as simple as adding a curtain, it did take us about an afternoon of work, and we’re glad it gave us another lush view to enjoy from these upstairs windows. And since we’re on the subject of landscaping, we thought we’d share a more recent photo of the facade since these landscaping fill in really well, too. The plants here seem exceptionally happy, which is a relief since we don’t have watering but they don’t seem to mind. *This post contains affiliate links* Note: To see all the other projects we’ve done over the past year we’ve been here, it’s all brought together on this page in one place. More posts from Young House Love
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