A new fence...

Yes, it's been a quiet garden week, only because I've got a dose of tonsillitis, and for once bed is more appealing than my garden.  I know I hinted it could happen, I never thought it would, but maybe there are some out there in gardenland who would like to see our new side fence.

The old one was painted timber palings, on a perpetual slant, albeit some areas a few degrees closer to tumbling than others. It was like that when we bought the little blue shack, and it is surprising its lasted this long when I think on it. Termites had long since eaten out the bases of the uprights which supported the rails onto which the palings were nailed. Recently our neighbour decided to pull out a half dead tree which was close to the fence line, and pulled half the old fence out with it, necessitating a halt to the procrastination surrounding its replacement. Luckily our neighbours were of the same mind as us, and as luck would have it had previously purchased a quantity of sheet metal fencing we term"good neighbour fencing". I don't know the history behind this name, and I don't think it does much to encourage a good neighbourly relationship, except to completely block out one side from the other with six foot (180cm) high sheet panels (although looking at the photos of our often overgrown and messy gardens I can probably understand their thinking). As I said, we were considering this type of fencing anyway, but probably at a maximum height of 5 foot (150cm). That extra is somewhat startling, particularly given that we've placed the panels above ground height on a downhill slope so  that as the soil on our side builds up, as it has considerably over the 8 years we've already been here, it won't build up against the panels encouraging rust during damp times.

The fence itself was a breeze to construct with Hubby doing most of it himself. Firstly tying a string line to the last panel of our fencing we'd already erected from the front of the property running down to just past our banana trees (this is where we ran out of those panels) to the end panel of the bottom fence boardering the road to create a guide to placement.

Hot pink stringline zooming past our existing garden areas

Hubby at work, stringline in place and frames being put in and levelled, vice gripped in place until concreted with some angled temporary timber supports.

Hubby then simply screwed a top and base rail to a set of uprights, dug out holes for the extra length of the uprights could drop down into the ground to the desired height either side, letting the base rail sit perfectly horizontal and spirit level even, then back fill the hole with concrete to ensure it won't move again anytime soon. Hubby then took the screws out of one side of the top rail to allow the colourbond metal panels to slide into place across the hollowed out base rail, and then refitted the hollowed out top rail thus enclosing the panels in a complete frame, with one frame attaching to the next.

Frames lined up and cemented in.

Completed fence from the neighbours side.

Completed fence from our side, fairly hidden from the footpath by our hedges. On a positive its height means our chook pen and enclosure is really protected from the winds that come from that side now.

Out next step is to fill in the gaps under the fence line because as mentioned our block slopes from top to bottom, therefore the gap on the high side as every panel may only be a couple of inches, not enough to let a chook slip under, but on the low side of the panel it is high enough to let a large dog crawl through. We are using treated pine sleepers to do this, propped up be large stakes. The large stakes will serve to double as a vertical growing surface by stringing metal wire between them. This should provide me with a great place to grow climbers like chos (chayote) or even espalier a pear tree, which will hopefully also prevent to much summer sun heating up the metal and making the area hot.

Kookaburras have already made themselves at home, sitting on the fence above one of my small ponds where they like to take baths during the hot weather.

Have you done any construction in your garden lately?