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Secrets to an Almost Instant Secret Garden

© Carol Wallace

The rich have it easy here. When they decide they want a private, even secret area in their yard, they hire someone to build walls, or fancy fences. Or they go out and buy enough tall, mature trees and shrubs to do the trick. An instant secret garden.

But the rest of us have to cultivate a bit of patience. We will have our secret garden - but we will have to create it in stages.

Design Considerations
Whether you want your entire garden to be secret or simply a portion of it, the recipe is the same. You need to plant or build something that will shield you from public view. In a large garden that may simply mean creating a small garden room somewhere off the main track for garden visitors. In a small garden it may simply mean erecting a screen or planting a shrub that acts as a divider between the public and more private parts of the garden.

You may be shocked at the very idea of dividing up what may already be a pretty small space, but trust me - your garden will actually seem larger if you create separate "rooms" in it. Let's say you have a deck out back with a clear view straight to the back fence. The yard will appear to be what it is. Small. There is no mystery involved in a straight shot clear view.

But plant a small garden area around the desk and then, some distance away create a "wall" of either lattice, fencing or shrubs with a "door" leading to the rest of the garden, it's impossible for most people to tell how much more garden may be out of sight. It could be huge. Infinite! Especially if you plan the break in the wall to take advantage of borrowed scenery - a view of a distant mountain or even a stand of birches in the yard behind you. You've added mystery, created a private space beyond the natural gathering spot that a patio tends to be - and you have made the garden seem larger.

Temporary "Walls"
But what do you use for walls if you haven't got millions, or half a century to wait while your clipped box grows large?

I was faced with this very problem last year when we removed an informal hedge of buddleias surrounding our main garden, replacing it with a more formal hedge of Canadian hemlock. While the buddleia worked well enough, it was only a sometimes hedge. Every spring we cut it down to the ground to keep it full and leafy. So for nearly half the summer it didn't provide much privacy at all.

				gracillimus

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