THORNS on your side
Hedge your home security bets with these prickly borders that will help deter intruders and give birds a haven safe from predators
OUR garden plants have many purposes but one of the most useful is to keep our homes and boundaries safe and secure. Let’s look at the top plants to prevent burglars from becoming a thorn in your side.
DIG IN DEFENCE
NOWADAYS, security can cost a fortune with alarm systems, fencing and lighting, but you can use nature to help protect and secure your garden as well.
There are many plant varieties that would deter even the most hardened of intruders, with thorns and branches in an impenetrable thicket that not only embellish your garden with flower, fruit and foliage, but are also a great deterrent to unwanted guests within the garden area.
PRICKLY PALS
OF course, the added advantage of planting thorny plants in the garden is that they also make great nesting for birds because the thorns add protection against predators looking to get their eggs or chicks. When I’m talking about thorny plants,
I’m not talking about ugly things – I’m talking things of pure beauty.
Shrub roses for instance. These are very different from the normal hybrid tea or floribunda roses which are small bushes.
The shrub roses, on the other hand, grow to about 1.5 metres by 1.5 metres and are absolutely full of the most spectacular flowers, from singles to doubles, from whites to pinks to bright reds and multi-coloured, and many of them have heavenly scents but they also have a lot of thorns.
So, planted in border areas of the garden where people are liable to jump over the fence, or in areas at the front of the garden where you don’t want people to step over, shrub roses are a pretty good deterrent.
PRETTY POWERFUL
ANOTHER plant you may not have thought about is gooseberry. But it’s a double whammy because you not only have the thorns on the bush, but you have the delicious gooseberries themselves. These plants do particularly well in any flower border as a low thorny plant that produces flowers and, of course, fruit as well – perfect for gooseberry fool and pie, or even making a gooseberry preserve which is ideal to go along with strong cheddars. It’s gorgeous.
Another plant that works particularly well if you don’t want burglars climbing up on to your window ledges is the Pyracantha or firethorn.
This can grow close to a property, under windows and over door frames. Birds love to nest in it, but the thorny stems deter break-ins.
It has masses of flowers early on in the season and spectacular berries of orange, red or yellow depending upon which variety that you choose. In addition to that, it’s semievergreen so it holds a lot of the foliage on to give effect all year round.
COMPLETELY COVERED
NOW, there are some big, big plants to enable you to cover large areas. So if you’ve got space at the back of your property where you can grow things that are quite large, look beautiful and are impenetrable too, consider the following plants:
■ HOLLY comes first to mind. As well as growing your own Christmas decorations, the spines on the foliage work particularly well in deterring unwanted guests.
You don’t have to get them just in green – you can buy them in gold variegated and white variegated too.
You can also go for varieties that produce berries as well, to give you some perfect winter effects, so holly is a really good choice.
■ ANOTHER beautiful shrub is Berberis. There are many different varieties of this, but Berberis stenophylla is almost like living barbed wire.
It’s a big unruly plant that has masses of golden flowers which give you something really special visually in the garden.
But the length of the branches and the thorns make it a pretty good choice to ward off thieves as well.
■ MAHONIA is more of a stately one. And Mahonia ‘Charity’, which has slightly thinner leaves to its sister They almost look like sculptured holly leaves – they grow quite tall and have spectacular fresh lemon flowers during the winter months, just when you need a bit of colour in the garden.
■ OF course, the old favourite is blackberries. You can buy thorn blackberries that can be placed in positions around your garden where you need maximum strength and support – and you have the added bonus of delicious fruit.
So remember that nature can play a key part in protecting your property.
Mix these methods with your outdoor security lighting, making sure that your sheds, garage and home are double-locked, and also putting security alarms on your sheds, and it’ll go a long way to making sure unwanted guests do not intrude on your home.