The legalities of putting sharp and pointy things on the top of walls/gates

[Mary Fisher]

I grow quite a lot of brambles, for the bees, the fruit and the canes.

It's not at all difficult to kill them but you have to do it deliberately, that is they rarely just die voluntarily.

But to be effective at keeping out unwanted visitors you really need to have several making a barrier of at least a couple of feet thick

A better barrier is made from wild roses - they really DO bite and don't like letting go. You can manage with just single strands of them. They're very pretty when in flower and in hip and the hips are useful in the kitchen too. And they're quite difficult to kill, partly because you can't easily get near them ...

Mary

[Mary Fisher]

You can, but it will escape by roots and from the cane tips which will root when they touch a bit of soil.

You don't need to justify growing anything except, on occasions, some plants which are proscribed in your country (not US if you live in UK).

Mary

[Mary Fisher]

"nightjar .uk.com>"

We're just back from hawking in the Highlands (I'm taking a break from skinning the bag) and we had to negotiage very unstable dry stone walls and low barbed wire fences as well as sedge tussocks and streams and a lot of waterlogged ground. There were no louts up there ... except us you could say!

Mary

[Antix]

THe most difficult thing to climb is a badly put up fence that wobbles !

A solid brick wall 9-11 foot high is a 'challenge' that every kid will want to climb..especially if it's not obvious what's the other side (nothing much more tempting than a secret garden..)

If you really need a solid brick wall, and have the space...build a nasty loose wobbly fence about 6 foot behind it so when the kids get up on top of the brick wall, it'll be a good jump to get over the second fence and into your garden...with the added complexity of having to climb said wobbly fence to get back out again in a hurry (with a precarious jump from the wobbly fence to the brick wall)

Secondly, a nice patch of mud the other side of the wobbly fence will deter the fashionable kids with posh trainers.

[Mary Fisher]

...

We had that for years in the office carpark opposite our house, more than 12 hours at weekends and public holidays and after office hours until after dark at other times. The youths wouldn't play football as such, instead they kicked balls as hard as they could against large wooden garage walls. It was awful. All the management would do was put up a feeble notice advising 'children' not to play in the grounds. The youths said that it didn't apply to them because they weren't children and that the security people said they could 'play' there. They had to climb oer a low wall or padlocked gates to get access. If I'd thought about molyslip I might have tried that.

Eventually I got it stopped by accidentally locating the site manager (he's not based there) and suggesting that the presence of such tresspassers was compromising the security of the site as a whole. He saw the sense of that, he's had a lot of trouble with security. Since then we've had blessed peace - two years of it. All the local residents hated it but they looked to me to 'do something about it'.

The building is used by 'Leeds Healthcare'. I tried explaining to the management that persistent noise can cause a lot of health problems but once they'd gone home at 5 pm they didn't care.

Sorry for rambling, your post brought it all back ...

Mary

[Steve Firth]

You can use "prickler strips" which are bands of short spikes, uncomfortable to get hold of but non-lethal. Also consider a stripe of anti-climb paint near the top of the wall.

[Dave Fawthrop]

|!On Mon, 19 Feb 2007 15:22:41 +0000 (GMT), Tony Williams |! wrote: |! |!>In article , |!> Owain wrote: |!>

|!>> Excellent. Even I should be able to grow them then. |!>

|!> Google for Himalayan Blackberry. You can't not |!> grow them, classed as a noxious weed in the US. |! |!I am much better at growing weeds or plants in the wrong place. In my |!front garden which is slabbed (badly before i bought the house), I |!have beds round the edge which I can only grow grass and skraggly |!weeds in, yet all the gaps between the slabs grow nice little flowers |!which i dont like to pull up because they look nice! |! |!Can i grow bramble/blackberry in a pot (even a big one)? this might |!mean that i can control it more while training it up the wall and more |!justify its existence as a flower not a weed.

If it touches the ground, it roots produces a new plant, then becomes a weed. It the roots get out of the pot same thing happens. They are hell to eradicate.

[badger.badger]

Cheap copperslip copy copperease/coppaslip or marine waterproof black grease....both absolutely impossible to wash out of clothing, BTDT.

[Terry Fields]

No problem.

Even after the passage of time, the sound of a football being bounced, perhaps just a couple of times, brings it all back.

Amazing thing, sensitisation.....

[Huge]

The Glove Of Death (TM) works fine with brambles. (Put on a heavy rubber glove, then a cotton one over the top. Dip hand in glyphosate solution. Lovingly fondle leaves of whatever it is you want to die.)

[Dave Fawthrop]

|!On 2007-02-20, Dave Fawthrop wrote: |!> On Mon, 19 Feb 2007 22:28:45 +0000, Tom Woods |!> wrote: |!>

|!>|!On Mon, 19 Feb 2007 15:22:41 +0000 (GMT), Tony Williams |!>|! wrote: |!>|! |!>|!>In article , |!>|!> Owain wrote: |!>|!>

|!>|!>> Excellent. Even I should be able to grow them then. |!>|!>

|!>|!> Google for Himalayan Blackberry. You can't not |!>|!> grow them, classed as a noxious weed in the US. |!>|! |!>|!I am much better at growing weeds or plants in the wrong place. In my |!>|!front garden which is slabbed (badly before i bought the house), I |!>|!have beds round the edge which I can only grow grass and skraggly |!>|!weeds in, yet all the gaps between the slabs grow nice little flowers |!>|!which i dont like to pull up because they look nice! |!>|! |!>|!Can i grow bramble/blackberry in a pot (even a big one)? this might |!>|!mean that i can control it more while training it up the wall and more |!>|!justify its existence as a flower not a weed. |!>

|!> If it touches the ground, it roots produces a new plant, then becomes a |!> weed. It the roots get out of the pot same thing happens. They are hell |!> to eradicate. |! |!The Glove Of Death (TM) works fine with brambles. (Put on a heavy |!rubber glove, then a cotton one over the top. Dip hand in glyphosate |!solution. Lovingly fondle leaves of whatever it is you want to die.)

As recommended on Gardners question time several years ago.

[Tony Williams]

Isn't it just. The first winter after we moved into this house we had water problems. You name it, anything connected with water could leak, burst, need repair or attention.

To this day, 20-odd years later I am sensitised and still cannot sleep if there is *any* sound of dripping water... which includes next door's gutter overflowing, at 05:38 this morning. :(

[Huge]

Indeed - that's where I got the idea from. Works a treat.

Also good for bindweed. Shove a bamboo cane into the ground in an appropriate place, wait until there's a luxuriant growth of BW up it, then Glove of Death!