44. Hedging and Screening I

I have a real problem with cats coming into the walled garden to use it as a litter tray. I put some bark mulch around some of the fruit tree beds in the autumn, and that has just exacerbated the situation. There are three or four cats that regularly come over the garden walls and it is very, very annoying.

My short term solution to this has been to use a battery of bamboo sticks to cover their favourite areas. This makes it difficult for the cats to manoeuvre into a comfortable position, so they look elsewhere. It does seem to work, but requires hundreds of bamboo sticks spaced fairly closely together, so is only practical for smaller areas of the garden. A much better deterrent would be preventing them from coming into the garden at all.

As another immediate deterrent I will be putting up nets to cover those beds that the cats use most often, and keeping them in place until they get out of the habit of doing it. It will also allow me to plant seeds for ground cover plants in the area, and give them the opportunity to grow, undisturbed by the cats.

The longer term strategy for this is to use hedging plants as a deterrent. The pricklier the better.

My first step is to put in a variegated holly hedge along one section of the back wall. They are an ideal choice: decorative, dense and very very prickly and will have the added advantage of being a safe sanctuary for the birds, who are very welcome visitors to the garden. You do need a mixture of male and female holly varieties to get berries in the winter. I have planted them in raised metal beds: the rich compost will help them establish and grow faster, and the height of beds will capture most of the falling leaves preventing them from falling on the ground. I have two small dogs and the prickly holly leaves are painful underfoot. Hollies are relatively slow growing so it will take a few years to establish a sizeable hedge, but when they do I should have an effective cat deterrent and the perfect nesting site for birds.

For another longer section of the wall I have used a different set of prickly deterrents: a combination of roses and japonica plants planted in layers. The first barrier is a row of climbing roses trained against the wall to reach the very top. This will prevent cats walking along the top of the wall. In front of that is the second barrier: a row of japonicas (chaenomeles) with their loose growing habit and prickly branches. Their lovely spring blossom and summer quince fruit is an added bonus. The third barrier is row of smaller floribunda roses planted along the front. I have chosen prickly varieties that will repeat flower all summer. Tough clothes and gloves will be needed for weeding and the annual pruning, but it will hopefully block the cats’ passage along the top of the wall, and remove any safe landing zone for them coming down.

And ultimately it will (hopefully) stop my dogs digging up the garden wherever the cats have been. That does seem to be the only reason the dogs do dig up the garden, so it should solve that problem too.