When I designed our west facing garden I put a south-facing deck along the north side so that we could take the most advantage of the sun. 

I like to relax and sit in the sun without the trappings of clothes, I’m not an exhibitionist, therefore, ensuring privacy was essential.  I raised the south and west fence and wall respectively to eight feet, blocking the surrounding houses’ view into the garden. There wasn’t much I could do to screen my next-door neighbor’s back bedroom window which overlooked our garden, but the bedroom wasn’t used, and hey, I decided that if Brian wanted to watch me enjoying the sun I’d just have to put up with it. To his credit, apart from a couple of minor quips, he never said a word (to us anyway).

The problem with raising the fence and wall was that after midday both were in shade, and looked very dark when viewed from the sunshine on the deck. I had an idea to brighten them up by hanging mirror mobiles over the deck to reflect the sun into the dim recesses of the garden.

I found some very inexpensive (£1.00) mirror balls in a local shop; took some metal coat hangers, silver paint, and fishing line and created my mirror ball mobile which worked very well.

It was great to watch the spots of light dancing across the otherwise dark fence and wall. I took this picture of one of the mirror balls I used to construct the garden mobile when I was testing my new Fuji Finepix camera. The colours of the Virginia Creeper in the background are wonderful.   

Back garden cleared and ready for work to begin. Copyright © Gary Allman, all rights reserved.

Garden – It took a few years for all the screening plants to grow in, but it worked well. Copyright © 2006 Gary Allman, all rights reserved.