js.b1 wrote:

On 16 Sep, 21:22, Mike Barnard
wrote:
Still waiting on land registry results, but the consensus is (if we
can get planning) to put up a steel fence with a climbing, thorny
plant on it. Any reccomendations for this plant? Something exotic and
lethal?

Pyrethrum.

ITYM pyracantha.

- Extremely dense, impenetrable, strong, interwoven web.
- Covered in long conical spines that are robust, sharp, vicious.
- Foliage continual all round, dark green, IIRC red berries.
- Grows quickly, easily forms an impenetrable 3-5-9ft hedge.

That's the one. There is a bush variety that grows about 3' high with
orange berries, and another than can grow 12' or more with red
berries. The latter needs to be kept under control, e.g. a bit of a
hedge trim every couple of weeks in the growing season.

Whizz along it with a hedge trimmer & recovers even if savaged.
Needs no care, favoured where "problem entries" run alongside gardens.

Indeed forget the fence, just create a hedge of pyrethrum.
Attractive, inoffensive, but mess with it and it becomes razor wire
that grows.

I'd suggest putting the fence up anyway, then going for the pyracantha
to protect the fence. Otherwise I fully agree.

There is one worse, but that requires multiple rows to get a dense
hedge.
Ask a good garden centre, shop around carefully.

Pay for the largest plants you can get, smaller ones can easily be
ripped up. Feed and water in the growing season.

I have the same situation as the OP, a single-skin garden wall that
after 40 years is showing signs of distress, crumbling mortar, cracks,
etc. If it goes while I'm still here, I'll put up a chicken-wire fence
and let the 30-year-established pyracatha bushes form into a
continuous hedge.