I posted a blog in 2021 about “Creating A Cottage Garden Part One. In the post I talked about how after our addition/renovation was done on our home in 2021, we were left with a perfect place for a cottage garden. In preparation for the garden, we roto-tilled the area, added garden soil, laid pavers for a path, added a birdbath, and ending by selecting plants and placing them (some still in their pots) into a garden design. I followed this post with “Cottage Garden Part Two”. Here I actually planted the garden and was contemplating some type of enclosure. After seeing a video of making a fence out of pallets, I decided to give it a try. Getting the boards off the pallets was a lot harder than I expected and I gave up the idea. I chose instead to use boxwoods around the garden and as they mature, it would create a separation.
That brings us to this blog post. Honestly, I don’t think I ever gave up on the idea of a fence, but it was just too much at the time. Every time I watched Linda Vater on You Tube and saw her Potage Garden enclosed with a beautiful fence, I wanted one too. I was finally pushed into action when I saw four by eight-foot cottagey looking fencing at Home Depot. They would be perfect to enclose my garden. Yeah!
P.S: First I had to convince my husband since I needed a partner in crime to pull this off. Ultimately, he came around. Love that man!
As a reminder, this is where we were after “Cottage Garden Parts One And Two”.
These are the lengths of fencing from Home Depot we ended up purchasing. Now I had to decide what color to paint them.
I thought about painting the fence white, but I didn’t think it would work with the piece of “perfectly rusted” wrought iron fence I had found on Facebook Marketplace.
Returning to Linda Vater’s Potage Garden and the fact that her fence was a darker color, I looked online to see if she had ever mentioned the color that she used. Not only did she mention the color, she posted the formula and the fact she purchased it through Home Depot.
I set myself up in the backyard, put my earbuds in and proceeded to paint all for lengths of fence and the posts they would be attached to. I did some singing and dancing along the way.
I really like the color. It’s a bronzy black/brown which goes well with the wrought iron fence.
As I was painting, I could see the garden right in front of me and thought wouldn’t it be great to have decorative newel posts as an entrance to the garden. A large salvaged pillar that we purchased a couple years ago came to mind.
My idea was to cut the pillar in half and create two newel posts.
Two halves of the bottom and top of the pillar. Now we just had to screw them together.
Because these halves did not match up, the circled part on the right had to be removed to put them in line.
That piece was cut out then glued back together.
After the posts were dry, I painted them with the fence color but wiped some off because I wanted it to be lighter than the fence and for the paint to get into the cracks.
Next, we started putting it all together.
First, we dug all the post holes.
Added the posts, put rocks all around and then backfilled with dirt.
Dug out trenches to level the fence.
Once everything was level, attached a clamp to hold in place while screwing together.
When we added the newel post they were a little short, so we added wood to the bottom to raise it up.
The finished fence for my cottage garden. I love the fence but thought something was missing. Maybe a finial for the newel post top.
I went shopping in my house and found two candle holders made of resin in my front room.
I added the same color paint as the fence to the candle holders and I love the results!
It was a lot of work, but the end result was worth it!
Next up, a glass of wine on the patio looking at our new garden fence!