If you have room out back - Make a potager!
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LOL on the HOA. : )

WOW Kathy, you scored big time, they look soooo cottagey. How is your veggie patch laid out, in back? Maybe you could put them around that.

Annette, who is visualizing them in the front of her house, big sighhhh.

Oh those are so neat plantmaven! I love the dip and curve of them. Why couldn't you put them out? What would they do if you did?

I put a couple of panels in part of my driveway. One is attached to a gate, but the other is only serving for a backdrop for a little 'nook' flower bed. You could use them to section off parts of the garden.
I don't know how big your back yard is, but you could always make another bed and have the fence set up around it. That would look neat. You might also lean them up against a pre-existing fence. They are really cool! ;-)
CMK

Score! Twelve panels AND a gate?! Oh, man. I would so find a place for that. Do you know how expensive that would be to build? Only I'd paint it Tinkertown Green I suppose. ha.

Aren't they cool? Once it cools off, I'll figure out something. The day after we got them was the day I got sick. So we weren't able to go back for more.
For 10 years I drove by that house and admired the fence.
Diane said that fence was there when she drove the school bus in the late 80's and that she too had coveted the fence.

That is a SCORE! Way to go! I am sure you will find SOMETHING you are legally able to fence in.
Can you garden and grow veggies in the back yard? I've heard of some HOA's that are now requiring patio and grass and NOTHING more, no veggie gardens, nothing else (no gardens, no shrubs) in back yards because neighbors can see them.

oh my - what a wonderful score - I would have been all over them like a bear on honey. I am sure you will find a good way to have them enhance your garden(s) - pictures when you figure out what to do with them.

......and I could not live with an HOA that wouldn't let me have gardens and neat stuff like that - but that is just me :) .....

Lynne

Can you propose a project for the fence to your HOA for approval? I wouldn't be able to use that fence here per HOA rules either. I'd have to get a variance to the covenants if I wanted an exception to the approved fence style.

Our metal Jerith fence around the cottage garden was on our blueprints when we built, so I got it approved as part of the house, rather than part of the landscape! :-) The landscape fence requirement here is 3 board, pasture fence.

Cameron

Those are beautiful panels and look very sturdy and well-made. Are they 8' panels? That's a lot of fence and would make such a nice statement. I do hope you find a way to use it w/o the HOA causing issues.

Cameron what forethought to get the fence approved as part of the building process.

OH man, if you can't find somewhere to use them, I will take them off your hands. I will even come get them, in October when I drive to Texas! I have been wanting a picket fence like that since I moved to my house 15 years ago, and I don't even have to worry about a HOA!

Seriously good score! Lucky you

Jenny P

Off topic, kind of.

There was an X-Files episode with a HOA that was too strict. A monster came and ate them. :-)

Oh lucky lucky you!! Man what a score you made and they even come with a history. I am so envious.

What a lucky find! I am sure you will come up with something in the back yard. Is the back yard fenced now? Could you make various rooms with them, like an herb and veggie garden, a cutting garden, or as background screens here and there.......or you could sell the house and move to the country!

glenda

Actually the HOA isn't that bad. I have lived in neighborhoods with out them that ended up with cars on blocks etc.
I don't want it out front, and I don't want to have to paint it.

I think I want to do something around the shed. I just had the brick edging put in. I wish I had know about the fencing at that time.

Path at center of patio.

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Turning right to walk through the rose arbor.

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Left side of the shed. You can't tell in this pic. but the ash tree has a very large canopy and shades most of the back yard. Plus shade from the back fence neighbor.

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Front of the shed. That rose blooms once a year. I think I want to put a repeat bloomer in it's place. On the right side of the shed is a cable box about 3x3x3. Also 2 large redtip photinias. One is dead and I planted vines to grow on it.

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As the house faces North, even with the shade of the trees there is a lot of hot sun.
You can see the grass has turned brown. But if we ever get rain, it will green up.
It is too hot to get out and clean up the pots etc.

Kathy,

Great find! Those fence panels and the shed look like a good match. Even the existing trellises back by the trees would fit in perfectly.

It really is too durn hot to work in the yard, but seems like a cold front today -- only 91 degrees mid-afternoon. If the rain would just come through town and not around it...

Glad you are feeling better.

-S

have you checked out the Garden Junk forum? Those folks over there will have a perfect solution for you.

Here is a link that might be useful: Garden Junk forum

Would it be possible to put the fencing inside the bricked garden area by the shed? Just about a foot in. Then you would have a narrow bed outside of it, bordered by the brick where you could plant your gorgeous irises. The only space you would really lose would be from the few inches of depth from the fence pickets.

Also, I'm sorry to hear you had been sick. Glad you are feeling better!

Diana

Aside from the obvious of reusing them as fences.... you could

even them out and use them as horizontal trellises.

or

Even them out, and hang on the backfence. YOu can then hang pots from them.

or use them to create shelves

or to create tables

or makes a nice compost bin

Major score!! You could paint them all different colors. I could think of at least 4 different projects for them. Do post back and show how you wound up using them.

Oh my goodness! What a find! I think it would look great with a pink climbing rose draped over it. It will make a wonderful backdrop to lots of cottage flowers.

Kathy,

That is great.
I love "dumpster diving" and "curb collecting" good reusable things...finding ways to recycle other people's throw aways. It is how the oldest form of cottage gardening came to be - the poor cottagers rescued plants, bulbs, pots, yard ornaments, bricks for paving, and yes, even fences and gates that the rich folks or their land barons had thrown out in favor of some new something. The cottagers were in many instances, the reason many of the "old favorite" flowers and veggies still exist today.

As creative as you two ladies are, I am sure you will find a clever and beautiful cottagey way to use them.

Terrific find. I am happy for you.
Your friend,
~Annie

you drive them up to my house, that's what you do with them!

they're gorgeous - i like the idea of turning them on end for a ladder-like trellis - you could also use a vertical fence for multiple hanging pots w/misc garden bling

kathy & scully - our town has hoa's, but not our neighborhood - we, and other neighbors, refer to our housing area as the slums of C*** or the C*** ghetto b/c we have ordinary weeds and ordinary cars and ordinary front doors, etc - one of our neighbors across the yard is a poster child for why HOAs are beneficial - but i can so see the HOA nazis, the really hateful ones, being eaten by aliens :-)

those panels are what i hope to accomplish with our old fence panels - we're slowly replacing them - with two level panels, i hope to cut off two feet at the bottom, remove every other picket, give them a rough coat of white paint, then create a fenced entrance where the side yard (with all white garden) meets the full back yard

i look forward to seeing your final project, too

~ freshair