My neighbour is nice enough. But he was widowed a few years back and is lonely. I have a lot of time for him, but this year he built an extension on his house with a deck that's level with the top of the 6 foot dividing fence. This summer it was just scaffolding up for the builders, but it gave us a heads up as to what we'd be dealing with when the deck was finished. He just shouted over to us constantly. My sympathy waned a little when we were just chatting and I mentioned something about liking a lot of time alone. Out of the blue he responded with "if you take that to it's natural conclusion you'd build a 10 foot fence so you didn't have to talk to me". That's when the penny dropped that he'd worked it out and figured there's no way we could avoid him even if we wanted to! By law we can only have a 6 foot fence.
So, we purchased 8 foot bamboo plants and put them in huge tubs. We placed them on a raised area in our garden and now have that 10 foot barrier. That, along with a woodstore with solar panels on top and a few containers with trelace (sp?) attached and we have complete privacy.
We've also planted huge rambling roses, clematis etc that will create even more of a barrier in time. But that bamboo gave us instant screening. Another good screen for summer is Scarlet Runner Beans grown up wigwams or a-frames. They even do brilliantly in containers.
