Garden Build, Part 3: Garden Security

With our raised garden beds built and garden gates hung, garden security moved to the forefront of the project.

Living in a rural area has brought us a large amount of animals: foxes, armadillos, gophers, and rabbits, to name a few. But the animal with the highest probability of doing the most immediate damage to our garden is our 60-pound yellow lab, Ruby Sue.

We love our big, wild girl.

But if she’s not breaking off whole chunks of azaleas from attempting to bound over them or chewing up my plastic walkway lights, she’s off finding other kinds of trouble.

And I would like to avoid garden trouble.

Unconventionally placing our garden in the front yard means balancing practicality with aesthetics. We needed fencing that would be high enough to keep her out, low enough to allow the beauty of the garden to shine, and complementary to the rustic design.

We settled on rolled cedar fencing. My original vision saw us attaching these about halfway up the bed, but that didn’t look right. I was also concerned that would leave the fence too unsupported during wild weather.

Instead, I pulled the bottom of the fencing flush with the bottom of the raised bed boxes. This meant that about 12 inches extended above the garden boxes. I suppose if our dog wants to jump over the fence she could, but I just don’t see that happening.

Now squirrels? I still haven’t figured out a garden security method that will deal with those.