Too bad you have three different fence looks going on here. Have you thought about putting the shorter fence behind the wood & white fence so that it is less noticeable? Chat with your neighbour to discuss a better solution to keep his dogs on his own property?

Expand this garden into the yard so that you can plant shrubs to hide the electrical box that is outside of the black fence. If you planted 3 emerald cedars, they would hide both units all year round. You could construct your own stone 'inukshuk' sculpture shown in the photo below. Do you have any perennial plants in there now?

Is this a sun or shade area? Most reputable garden centres will help you choose plantings and design a plan that is best for a specific area. Show them your photo, measure the area and do a rough sketch showing the location of the pine trees, the electrical boxes and note how the sun travels across your yard.

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by Q .Le · More Info

Thank you for the ideas. The three fence thing is not great, we have an older neighborhood behind us, and they were required to have wood fence, we are new and required to have vinyl fence. I could always spray paint the iron fence we have to put up in the corner for the dogs. Neighbors feel like they were there first, so dogs are our problem. It is mostly a shade area, with some sun.

The good thing about a dark coloured fence is it disappears in a dark shaded background, so I would leave it dark.

Neighbours....yikes. So, what would they do if their dogs go into your yard and wander off??!! It's not your responsibility to contain them for their convenience. I'd be tempted to lay that fence down for a few days to see how they handle retrieving their dogs. Tell them you are making changes to your garden and they will have to deal with it. Your town must have a bylaw that dogs cannot run at large. Did I say that out loud? I feel so bad for your situation. Things like this are always difficult when you want to try to be civil and keep the peace.

The problem is, I have two small dogs and they have a German Shepard and an Akita, I've no doubt mine would be dead in an instant should they make it into our yard. The city will do nothing unless they actually make it into our yard, at that point it would be too late.

In the first picture, do you know what the bushes are that are flowering white?

They look like they could be white lilacs. Your best bet is working with your local nursery and I do mean nursery. Sometimes the larger stores don't have employees aware of zone and/or ahade issues and are only saling what they have in stock. A nursery would be able to order items you want, but they don't have.