DIY This Ecofriendly Fence For A Cozy And Clean Garden Path

Growing luscious foliage around your yard elevates your home's curb appeal. Planting colorful flowers or green shrubbery adds texture and depth to a flat, mundane yard. There are a myriad of annuals you can add to your garden and create a gorgeous walkway leading to the front door. However, if you plant taller flowers like sunflowers, marigolds, zinnias, goldenrods, etc., there's a chance they can droop over and make the walkway look crowded and messy. While you can trim the flower beds back so they don't droop, it makes the area look bare. Instead, take a tip from TikTok user @mujinmakes and build an eco-friendly fence, also known as a wattle, to help the flowers grow tall and straight.

A wattle is a fence made up of woven branches from various types of trees. It's one of the easiest DIY fences you can create by yourself or with the help of your kids. You can source the branches from any trees around your house or find stores that sell or give out wood for free. If you're going to forge branches, ensure you don't take too many from a single tree so that it can continue to grow and flourish. You'll need a hand saw to cut all of your branches. Building the fence can take some time, but it'll give you a striking, neat, and cozy garden path. You can customize your wattle with climbing vines or hang signs with meaningful quotes. Here's how to make one.

Wherever you gather your branches from, ensure they're all similar in length and thickness. Ideally, the longer and straighter branches are the best. When figuring out how many branches to collect, get as many as possible and more than you think you need to have backup branches in case some don't work out. After gathering the branches, sort them into three piles: pickets, weaves, and backups. The pickets should be the straightest branches with a 1-inch diameter since they'll be used to hold up the fence. The weave branches should be thinner and wavier that will go between the pickets.

Once you sort your branches, take your picket pile and create a sharp spear end with a knife on each branch. Also, cut the tops so they're all the same size, about 4 to 6 feet long. Then, drive each picket into the soil, evenly spacing them out along both sides of the walkway with a hammer. Next, take your weave branches pile and intertwine them through the pickets. Start at the bottom and place one branch behind the first picket, then in front of the second picket, and alternate sides until you run out of length. Repeat the step with all of your weaving branches, stacking them on top of each other on both sides. When you reach the top of the pickets, push them down to secure them. Finally, trim the edges to make it look neat, and you're done!