• A wooden fence is a charming perimeter for your garden.Garden swing image by Allen Stoner from Fotolia.com
  
  A wood fence will blend into your garden quite naturally if you make it from a wood that ages well, like cedar or teak. If the expense of those woods is too much, paint a fence of cheaper wood, mix fencing materials, plant the fence with vines and flowers, or fill it in with live plants. Your choice can be as simple or fanciful as you imagine.
  
  

Secret Garden

• Surround your garden with a white-painted picket fence planted with hollyhocks, sunflowers and morning glory vines. Keep it low for glimpses of the garden or make it tall for complete privacy. The garden gate can be a wooden trellis planted densely with climbing rose bushes or lilac vines. Instead of open pickets, join the wooden boards with a crosspiece along the back of the fence to form a tall, solid wall. Attach sections of joined boards to sturdy wooden fence posts that ring the garden and paint the whole thing to match the trim of your house. Build two gateposts of mortared stones or old brick and hang a wooden door between them made of rectangular shutters or flat boards rounded at the top. Use old fashioned heavy latches and hinges for the door and paint it a faded pink or green to add a touch of fairy magic to the garden entry.
  
  

Tumble-down Garden Fence

• For a garden fence that looks as if it’s always been there, mix wood and stone in a weathered-and-worn design that could be borrowed from an old country estate. Set wooden posts at regular intervals around the area to be fenced. Build a stacked stone wall between every other post. Fill in the remaining sections with vertical boards left to weather to a natural gray or, for cheaper grades of wood that need a protective coating, painted a faded color, as if they had spent years in the sun and rain. The entry gate can be more of the boards, joined into a door with a curved top and iron hinges and latches. Paint the gate to match the wood fencing or paint it a vivid color as a contrast—a bright blue, red or purple. Plant flowering vines along the entire fence for bright summer blossoms and leaves and scrolls of withered vine in winter. Plant ivy in some areas for year round greenery. Either choice will help to blend wood and stone together,
  
  

Bamboo Garden Fence

• Use thick, dried poles of bamboo as fence posts for your garden and dig a trench all along the fence line for live bamboo plants. If you plant clumping bamboo, get it from a nursery in large enough plants to fill in between the posts. Clumping bamboo grows more slowly and does not spread aggressively. It will eventually form a tall, sturdy fence around your garden. If you choose running bamboo, line the trench with cloth from the garden store to prevent the bamboo from spreading everywhere and turning your garden into a bamboo forest. Running bamboo is extremely prolific and you will need to chop the rhizomes periodically to keep it in bounds. It will grow into a slender, leafy green fence, as dense as you let it be.