Fencing the Garden

I've spent the last few years restoring the original homestead garden that, unfortunately, had been used as a dump by the previous owners.  My efforts have been concentrated on cleanup and rebuilding of the soil, with minimal attention to the aesthetics of the area.  But, with the soil finally in great shape, it's now time to focus on dressing up the garden.  I'm leaning toward a French kitchen garden design, with garden boxes, a wooden fence, and maybe even a fountain.  This week, I decided to build the garden fence after I found some wooden pallets among our collection of salvaged materials.  The fact that I'm a gardener, not a builder did cross my mind, but I figured my husband could fix whatever mess I created.   I had no plan in mind, I pretty much just made it up as I went.  Here's how the project unfolded... 

I didn't want to spend any money on this project, so all the materials I used came out of our salvage pile.  The pallets were dumpster finds, the lumber and posts came from an old deck, and the nails and screws were leftovers from other projects.  All of the items had seen better days, but that didn't faze me.  I had a mission... 

I wanted my fence to look like a picket fence, so I turned the pallets so the boards were going vertical, not horizontal.  I staked them up with some small t-posts I stole from another fence, and tacked them together with scrap lumber pieces.  After I got a few together, I could kind of see a pallet wall taking shape!

Encouraged, I found some wide boards in our lumber pile and decided they'd make a good top rail.  They were full of old bent nails, so I used the claw end of the hammer to pull the nails out.  I straightened them up and used them to nail the boards to the top of the pallet wall.  And I only smashed my fingers a few times!

When I got to the end of the wall, the board was a little too long, so out came the hand saw.  That was taking too long, so I hunted up my husband's battery-powered jig saw.  It went a lot faster after that!  I'm not usually a fan of modern technology, but power tools are an exception.  I like electricity too, and hot running water.  But I digress...

So once I got the board sawed off and even with the pallet, I had to figure out how to do the corner.  I went searching through the salvage pile, and came up with four old cedar deck posts.  Perfect!  I nailed one on the end of my wall, and boy, did it look good.  After that, I was on a roll and it was easy to get the rest of the fence pulled together.  I even left space for a gate!

And this is how it looks so far.  I can't put on the last section until after I get the planting beds filled, but I'll get that done soon.  Then, I plan on white-washing the panels, attaching some solar lights, and hanging a few planters from the rails.  But for now, I'm amazed at how well it turned out.  I think I did pretty good for just winging it, and best of all, my husband is in awe of me!