Willow screening questions

Hi
First time poster to this forum.
I have a couple of questions about those rolls of willow screening you can buy. I want to use some next to my neighbour's fence. Questions are:

1) I want to use use rolls 2m high and 4m long, and will have 5 to cover a 20m length. The plan is to put in fence posts with wire stretched between, and attach the screening using wire ties. How many fence posts would I need do you think? I'm guessing one at each end of 20m would not be enough, do you think I would need one post every 4 metres?

2) I am hoping that as well as giving more privacy (neighbours fence is only about 1m high) it might stop the many cats coming in- do you think this is realistic? I know cats are nimble climbers, but not sure they would be able to jump onto the fence, and then up another metre onto a willow screen which would sway under the weight of a cat. Any experience of this would be welcome! I am not anti-cats (I have one myself) but can no longer enjoy my garden due to the amount of mess they leave- every cat in the area must use our garden and I've tried every trick in the book to persuade them not to come in, so have decided the only solution is to physically keep them out!

thanks in advance.

 

One every 4 meteres will be fine, but youll need to properly tension the wires with a turnbuckle , eybolts or a strainer.

 

Cats tend to use any bare soil as their toilet when they come into my garden, so I guess the trick is to minimise the amount of exposed soil you have.

A strategy adopted by my neighbour is to exploit the fact that cats are surprisingly intelligent creatures. Most the cats in our area have now learned that if they go in his garden, they get squirted with water if they get caught, so now they rarely bother (although I have seen an unfamiliar cat a couple of times, perhaps it is new and hasn't learnt yet).

 

Thanks for the replies.
Re: cats, don't get me started! The theory says they prefer loose soil, but if I make that difficult e.g brambles or ground cover, they just use the lawn instead which is worse, as I now cannot walk in the garden without treading in it. I've tried every trick going e.g. citrus rind, pepper dust, lion dung, water bottles, scaring them off, thorny cuttings etc. The theory also says that if you have your own cat they don't go in their own garden and don't let others either...wrong again, as we have a cat and it does go in our garden and doesn't stop the dozens of others in the area going there either!
I've put prikka strip (plastic spikes which don't injure cats but stop them climbing fences) on our own fence, and willow screening is the plan for the neighbours fence side.

Thanks for the advice about the posts and wire .

 

I've never heard the theory that cats deter other cats, in fact I think the opposite is true. Once one cat starts using your garden as a toilet, in no time at all many more will do the same.

 

Hi Blot and welcome to the forum.
I'm really sorry to hear about your cat woes having suffered pretty much the same as yourself I can honestly say I know what you are going through and it's far from nice.
Mine got so bad that the cats even dropped their load on our path they just couldn't be bothered to go somewhere and cover it up!

I found that cats will climb anywhere believe it or not the crazy gang that was terrorizing our garden (the nieghbours 4 cats) could even hedge jump!

I tried everything in the book (as most of the older members of this forum will know) but there were two things that worked pretty well one was a sonic cat repeller that run off batteries (I am still using these today) and the other was poop throwing!

My neighbours 4 cats were the ones messing in our gardens so I collected the poop and in the evening Bob and I would sling it back over to my neighbour she had the space in her garden to make her cats a 'toilet' area but instead dumped house bricks in her borders.

If your cat stays in at night then you could still use one of those sonic repellers I found that the 'mess' was getting dropped off through the night and early morning so we always switch ours on in the evening then off when we wake.

As for my neighbour well she soon got fed up with the poop and got herself a dog instead although I have yet to see her clean his mess up off her garden dirty mare.Hel.xxx.

 

She sounds it!

 

I have two cats, they both use the garden and honestly they can`t be bothered scaring off others so I do so myself. I have equipped myself with something I wanted all along-one of those expensie megawaterblasters. It`s fantastic, it even keeps the kids in line LOL.

 

I've got one of those ultrasound devices but 2 problems with it: 1) I could hear it and it stopped me sleeping at night and 2) it didn't seem to have much of an effect- believe it or not we had a problem with our own cat scratching our bedroom door at night which woke us up so tried putting the device outside the door- that cat would quite happily sit next to it and still scratch the door!!

As much as I'm tempted to throw the cr*p back, my neighbours aren't the sort of people you'd want to annoy, and besides it would be a bit wrong given I can't guarantee my cat doesn't sometimes go in other's gardens.

I still have hopes that the willow screening will keep them out. Perhaps I could also stretch some wire a few inches above it- I've heard this works for fences as well, as it stops them being able to balance on the top. The quest continues....!!