Privacy, Please
When she was working in front of the big windows of the study in her Spanish-style house on a corner lot in Fullerton, Clementina Eley couldn’t shake the feeling that she was practically sitting in the street.
Over in the Woodbridge subdivision in Irvine, Walt and Sherry Harrah felt under the microscope in the backyard of their newer house, situated tightly between similar multistory homes.
“The backyards are pretty much boom, boom, boom,” Walt Harrah said. “You can easily see over the fences. There isn’t much privacy at all.” Both families craved privacy, a rare commodity in increasingly urban and overpopulated Southern California. But instead of walling themselves inside with heavy drapes or forbidding fences, the families hired landscape designer-contractor Kathryn Rue to create natural privacy for their homes.
Both homes required a unique approach, but using a combination of trees, shrubs, vines and landscaping tricks--barrels, short walls, even umbrellas--the Rue Group Inc. of Fullerton made lush spaces that not only enhance privacy, but also serve as outdoor rooms.
“It’s lovely,” Sherry Harrah said of her redesigned backyard. “What she did was put vines between our house and the neighbors. It’s very private.”
The pros make it look easy, but landscaping for privacy can be the trickiest kind of outdoor project. Rushing out and buying the fastest-growing hedge available at Home Depot might solve an immediate privacy problem, but it could end in a pruning nightmare.
“You must understand how plants grow,” Rue explained. “The privacy effect could be temporary or it could never grow. A lot of times the right plants are in, but without proper maintenance it becomes a monster. And, sometimes, if you try to create privacy and don’t do it right, you can make a confined space.”
For example, Rue said, the Escallonia rubra hedge beats Pittosporum undulatum in a tight space, because rubra grows tall instead of wide. And while bougainvillea is a popular, beautiful vine, it’s also a lot higher maintenance than other vines. Fast-growing trumpet vines offer a less troublesome screen.
There is no one plant that makes for the best privacy. Every yard is as different as the tastes of the people who live in the houses.
An old favorite such as bamboo--which became popular in the 1950s after tourism took off in the South Pacific--can offer excellent privacy (it can take over a yard if left untrimmed), but the look is decidedly tropical.
“If you’re trying to do an English cottage garden, bamboo won’t work,” Rue said. “A lot of it does depend on the look you’re going for.”
The key to do-it-yourself privacy landscaping is research. The first step: understanding the problem. Does the lack of privacy extend to the entire side of a house or it is just a window that allows the neighbors a view of the bathtub?
A simple awning or evergreen bush can solve the bathtub problem, but problems such as the ones the Eleys and Harrahs faced require serious planning and layers of landscaping that provide cover 365 days.
Rue often starts her planning with a visit to the neighbors’ house. It’s helpful to see what they see.
“I’ve even had clients pay to have a tree put in their neighbor’s yard,” she said. “Even a strategically placed market umbrella can be enough.”
When it’s not, Rue uses combinations of trees, shrubs, vines and clever landscaping features--walls, courtyards, raised berms, planters, even broken-up concrete patio as tiles--to make a pleasing private space. Projects can cost from a few hundred dollars to the $35,000 overhaul Rue is doing in Cypress Point.
At that house, exposed on three sides to multistory homes, she is using a combination of hedges such as Prunus caroliniana and eugenia; 3-foot-tall trees in raised box planters (the equivalent of platform shoes for a young, short tree); and an arbor covered with flowering vines. The layers of greenery obscure the neighbors’ view and make for a pleasant view from the house. The cost of the project is high because the owners asked for a fireplace, courtyard, a water feature and cooking area to transform their yard into a small, private park.
“An outdoor room is really what we’ve created for them,” Rue said. The trick is to balance the elements, ensuring privacy without sealing off the area from the world.
While greenery often provides the prettiest cover, some manufactured enhancements are the fastest way to privacy. Plants take time to grow.
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Hauling in a few truckloads of dirt can break up a flat lot and give young plants a boost to break up headlights or obstruct a street-level view through a window. And fences may look imposing at first, but they can be beautiful features when covered with ivy or flowering vines.
When Rue toured the Eley house in Fullerton, she determined that an open courtyard made up of small walls and plants was the best way to break up the Eleys’ view of the street. The walls support layers of Boston ivy, jasmine and other vines designed to keep the area colorful and private all year.
“If that wall and the vines weren’t there, anybody outside could see everything in the house and I would feel like I was practically on the street,” Eley said.
“When the walls first went up, I thought I’d made a mistake. But once the landscaping grew in, it really softened up. I get compliments on that wall.”
