Raise your hand if you own a home, plan to own a home in the future, and/or currently rent.
For anyone who didn’t raise their hand.
Well as you all probably know, the wife and I bought a house a couple years back. Our back yard had a border made up of hedges. The hedges grew uncontrollably and we had talked about getting rid of them since before we actually bought the place.
Everyone in our family advised us against this. They told us we don’t want to get rid of the ugly hedges because…
- It offers privacy in our back yard.
- It’s a security measure against theft and home invasion.
- It will keep unwanted people out of our yard.
- It’s prettier and easier to maintain than a fence.
So let’s take a look at some of these points. In reverse order…
- It’s prettier and easier to maintain than fence.
What the hell are you talking about? These things grow exponentially. We would have to trim them at least once a month to keep them from getting out of hand. Absolute minimum? Twice a year, and that’s going to have some pretty growy times in between.
A fence needs random maintenance to fix breaks and maybe paint it every few years. If you know how to buy paint and how to apply it you don’t need to paint it or re-seal it every year.
- It will keep unwanted people out of your yard.
Who the hell is wandering into your yard? Six foot high hedges mean nothing when they’re connected by a two-foot high gate, as it is in my case. Not to mention a fence works much better. Drunk neighbors can stumble through the hedges. And if you’ve got a rosebush on the inner side of the hedges and they fall through the hedges into it, they can actually sue you for the price of the stitches.
You know what keeps people out of your yard better than hedges? Land mines. I don’t hear anybody telling me I should put those around my yard.
- It’s a security measure against theft and home invasion.
They’re hedges, not a door. Tall hedges in your backyard can actually make home invasion or theft more likely, because it gives the thief a hiding spot to pick a lock, break a window, or kick in a door. Hedges also attract spiders, raccoons, and snakes. Two out of those three things are not wanted in our yard. The Wife’s got a thing for reptiles.
“Hi, I’ll be highly venomous in about three weeks. Thanks for the invite!”
- It offers privacy in our back yard.
What are you doing in your yard that you don’t want anybody to see? Is my family full of exhibitionists that like to boink in the back yard that just don’t want their neighbors watching? And really, they just don’t want their neighbors on the first floor watching, because plenty of my neighbors have two-story homes and can see right over the hedges.
You know how you make your backyard private? Surround it with walls and put a roof over it. And while you’re going that far, you might as well cement the floor, since the grass isn’t going to get any rainwater or sunlight anymore. And you might as well either make it a garage or put a nicer floor in it and turn it into a spare room.
And, once you’ve remodeled your backyard into a spare room you can build a window or two. You can even put up some curtains in the window to block your neighbors’ view.
Or, y’know, just put a plotted plant in front of the window. Maybe a shrub of some kind?
~RCS
Richard C. Shaffer 