Fencing research.

We've decided that it's time to get serious about building a fence.  Our toddlers are at that perfect age when they love to be in the yard with us, and I'm dying for some extended time working on our garden and flowerbeds.  I can't really do that, though, with a steep slope out back and a street out front and two little ones to keep an eye on.  But with a fence... ah!  Outdoor bliss!

It's hard to know how to fence a historic home.  My husband's too busy for massive handyman construction projects, so a uniquely creative artsy handmade fence is rather out of the question.  However, your standard Home Depot privacy or picket fences (or worse, the white plastic ones) won't exactly fit the bill either.  I see them on older homes, and I always think, "hmm.  someone recently did that."  When you're trying to be true to the house's history, that just looks too out of place.

I've had an idea for ages, and no idea whether it was even doable:  I wanted some of the old wire fencing that I've seen in the backyards of older neighborhoods-- loopy wire stuff that was closer together on the bottom (the better to block those pesky garden-eating rabbits) and fairly inobtrusive visually.  Problem was, I'd never seen it for sale, and had no idea what to call it.

After a lot (and I mean a LOT) of searching, I located a very old but ongoing thread on Gardenweb's Heirloom Plants and Gardens forum that felt like the Pearl of Great Price when I stumbled upon it.  Here were other "weird old house people," like me, looking for this antiquated fence!  And it WAS still being manufactured and sold in the USA!  Fabulous.

As a result, I've found:
A name:  Double loop ornamental fencing (or, possibly, rainbow, twisted wire, ornamental loop, arch top, or scallop top).
A current online source for 100 foot rolls of the stuff, should I be unable to order it at our local farm store.  Shipping will be painful.
A recommended support (poles cut from chain link fencing's horizontal support rails) that will mimic the thinner poles used in historic versions of this fence.
Tips on installation.
Pictures and descriptions of other homeowners' projects with this fence.
Examples of shipping costs.

I'm still a little lacking on actual pictures of historic homes with this type of fencing (although this Australian site is very helpful).  This would have been all but impossible without the internet-- and Gardenweb, which has an amazing array of home and garden forums with incredibly helpful people at the ready to help me with my obsessions.  :)

I spotted some fences made with this type of wire in a historic Victorian town not far from here, but didn't have time to grab pictures of the ones I liked best- they were installed w/ rigid top bars between the fenceposts, and painted black.  But here are two simpler installations worth looking at:
Here's a house built high on a steep hill.  It's hard to tell without clicking on the photo to zoom in, but that' s my wire fence up there, strung on metal posts that look like they're embedded into concrete blocks, which have been incorporated into the retaining wall.  In the larger photo below, you can see detail of the gate and the fence.

 

This one's a plain little fence, set on wooden posts with larger wooden corner posts (4x4?) that look like they're doing most of the work.  The gate was neat at this house, but there was a car parked in the way and I would've have to have gotten out of the car to get a picture.

Garden beginnings

Last spring about this time, I was busily trying to build us a small kitchen garden out behind the house.

As the same of the blog indicates, we live on a hill-- a rather steep, rocky hill.  Ruth Wilson, the original lady of the house, was a prolific gardener, and we have a number of things to thank her for-- mature flowering shrubs, a giant sprawling dogwood in the center of the backyard, and several gorgeous lilacs, for example.  But my favorite isn't these... it's the fact that she had some low concrete walls installed so that there is a garden-able spot just off the back (kitchen) door.

Because her husband J.O. inscribed and dated it, I even know how long it's been there:  90 years.

J.O. Wilson 3-7-1920

Thanks, Ruth.

Last year, I marked off a 4x16 spot near the southern edge of the flat area and created our little garden.  Some copper plumbing pipes created a trellis.  A roll of wire fencing created the first of several compost and leaf bins, and some compost, vermiculite, and grass clippings amended the soil via mulch.
 
This is the third garden I've built.  Ironically, we've always moved after one season in each of my gardens... so I've never had the chance to monitor and adjust, to try something different in the same spot the next year.  This will be the first year for that!

I'm pleased with the site, with the earthworms that have showed up to reside in the garden, and with the cottagey look.  I love that I can access half the garden via a low retaining wall-- so easy to pick low lettuces and such from there!  (Accessing the other side is more difficult because of the trellis, but I can live with that.)

However, due to an abundance of rain and a lack of sun, I'm not really sure how great of a spot this is.  My tomatoes barely sputtered along last year, and other hot-weather veggies never really came into their own.  We're trying again this summer and seeing how it goes.  If the giant oaks nearby do shade the garden too much for a good veggie harvest, we'll take down the trellis and make it into an herb area, and create ourselves a veggie garden in a sunnier spot.  (That will require a retaining wall on a slope, though-- I'm really hoping that our current garden will produce this year.)

I do want to take a soil sample into our county extension service for an analysis, to see if there's anything I need to add.  I hear that our area's soil is almost always short of magnesium, for example.  Whatever it needs must be added this year, so that we can give the garden every chance to succeed here.

Here's to more sun, a little less rain, and a greater harvest this year!  (I'll post on this year's garden soon, but wanted to get these pictures from last year shared before I dive into recording the 2010 efforts.)