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Gap between retaining wall and the fence, raised bed?
soniamarsh
Posts: 7
I've recently had part of my garden dug out and levelled to make a large patio. The builders have left the fences in situ, which follow the original lie of the land, sloping up 1:14 away from the house. The fence at the back is level, albeit 80cm higher than the fence near the house, the fence at the side slopes down. At my request, the retaining wall is 80cm high all the way around, and in order not to disturb the fence or it's footings (they're all brand new and a shared responsibility with my neighbours) the wall is about 30cm away from them. This means at one side, the sloping side, I have a gap between the wall and the fence, which starts around 10cm deep and gets progressively deeper to be about 70cm deep at the end of the wall. I would like to back fill this with some soil in order to pop in a few plants, but obviously the original fence goes behind this. My initial idea was to line the fence (which is sturdy and we've double faced so it's a kind of hit and miss arrangement) with the old paving slabs we've taken up, but because of the slope this would be complicated to work out where to cut them so they're nice a straight at the top and Mr M has little appetite for cutting more paving slabs. My new idea is to fasten another cross beam at the height of the soil and line the trench with thick polythene, the fence should be strong enough to retain the small amount of soil and the polythene would keep the fence from rotting, as well as helping to retain some moisture in the shallow bed. Does anyone have any objections or better ideas to this plan? I've not done this before. I know there' a chance the wood would rot from condensation, but it would only be our extra "faced" side, and the wood is tanalised and stained to protect it. There should be plenty of airflow from the other side.
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Posts
Can you not put concrete gravel boards against the posts, creating an enclosed planting space and allowing, maybe an inch gap behind them to the wooden fence?
There might be some kind of non-porous shuttering that you can get. I'm sure we used to have these 6ft long, 2ft tall and say 10mm thick plastic boards. They were tough and didn't have problems with UV. Took quite a bit of weight. I remember them from time as a kid. Heck knows where they came from (someone's workplace probably), but they were useful.
Best of luck!
Also, your gap of 30cm isn't particular large.
All too often people will plant small plants right next to or only a very short distance from their fence - well it looks stupid putting a little plant some 2 ft away from the fence, right? In a few years the plant grows and is touching the fence and in a few more years it's rotting the fence, keeping moisture up against it the whole time. Not to mention the roots possibly cropping up under the neighbours lawn/borders.
Perhaps a picture or two might help folks give better solutions.
What about window boxes or some kind of thin container? You may be able to put a hollow support structure underneath them to raise them to the height of the wall. Treated timbre batons and paint them with "Ducks Back" for extra waterproofing. The supports/frame would rot eventually, sitting in the dark, underneath containers, but would probably outlive fence panels.