8 Ways to Maximize Privacy in Your Sarasota Patio Design
Sometimes you just want to be alone with your thoughts and a bag of chips.
No nosy neighbors asking you why you got home so late the other night or telling you all about their bunion surgery.
How to make your patio more private? Areca palms to the rescue, with their dense, frilly fronds. Or plant a privacy hedge of pitch apples. Hide out in a pretty pergola, or beneath an arbor covered with flowering vines. Use lighting for evening privacy, and try a water feature to help mask pesky neighborhood noise pollution.
Let’s learn more about outdoor privacy solutions, including:
Who Needs Patio Privacy Ideas? Almost Everybody
Areca Palms for Patio Privacy
Outdoor Privacy Solutions Include a Hedge
Privacy Yard Ideas: Hide Out in a Pergola
Need Patio Privacy Ideas? Cover an Arbor with Vines
Raised Beds with Retaining Walls
Get Artsy with Custom Aluminum Panels for Backyard Privacy Ideas
Need Patio Privacy Ideas? Try Lighting
Bubbling Water Adds Privacy from Noise
Who Needs Patio Privacy Ideas? Almost Everybody
Unless you live out in the middle of nowhere, you could probably use some privacy.
Some Sarasota homes are 30 feet tall and just 10 feet away from each other. If you feel like somebody’s watching you, that’s not paranoia. Just real life.
Maybe you have a fence, but you want privacy above the fence line to block views up higher. There are backyard privacy ideas for that.
Or maybe you have a fence, but it’s not winning any beauty contests. You want to hide or soften it.
How to make your patio more private? Lots of ways:
1. Areca Palms for Patio Privacy
If you have at least eight feet of space between your patio and your property line, say hi to Areca palms — and a perfect 14 to 20 foot privacy screen.
The soft, fine-textured fronds of these pretty palms are full and dense and they can grow to 10 feet wide. This makes them great for use as outdoor privacy solutions.
You can leave the palm fluffy and full to the ground, or thin it out to see more of the trunk.
2. Outdoor Privacy Solutions Include a Hedge
Don’t have the space for a row of big areca palms? How about a tall hedge?
We love a row of pitch apples mixed with palms in-between to vary the height a bit.
Bonus points for being trendy. Pitch apples are among the hottest plants in Sarasota, popular for their versatile use as a shrub, hedge or tree.
Bonus: its nickname is “autograph plant,” as you can sign its leathery leaves with a toothpick or skewer and it will lighten and stay there for good. (Maybe write KEEP OUT.)
3. Privacy Yard Ideas: Hide Out in a Pergola
Don’t get us started on all the great reasons you need a pergola out there. Right now, we’ll keep it to privacy.
The ultimate Florida patio design feature, these popular garden structures are made of vertical posts or pillars that support cross beams or lattice overhead.
On a hot sunny day, a shady pergola offers welcome overhead protection, filtering the light and lessening the sun’s intensity.
But they’re nice little outdoor privacy solutions, too.
A pergola will hide your view about
8-10 feet up, definitely making your neighbor’s house less visible.
Create even more privacy by growing beautiful confederate jasmine up all four posts. Now your kids might not even be able to find you. (Bonus!)
4. Need Patio Privacy Ideas? Cover an Arbor with Vines
Pergolas are great, but maybe you just need, like, half a pergola.
That’s called an arbor, a smaller open structure that's often used as a decorative entrance, but when you grow lush flowering vines up its two posts, it offers nice privacy, too.
What kind of vines?
Mandevilla
Mandevilla is a great choice for an arbor. This fast-growing tropical vine loves to climb, naturally twining up sturdy supports then producing large, showy trumpet-shaped flowers in various pink, red, and white.
Star Jasmine
Also called Confederate Jasmine, this climbing vine is known for its glossy, dark green leaves and clusters of small, white, star-shaped flowers that emit a sweet, honey-like scent.
Bougainvillea
This pretty plant will bloom all year if it’s in full sun, offering you an explosion of stunning colors — pink, magenta, purple, red, orange or yellow.
5. Raised Beds with Retaining Walls Make a Patio More Private
Maybe you just know retaining walls as those handy concrete block structures that keep a house from sliding away in a heavy rain. We love that about them.
But enlist retaining walls as raised planting beds to hold a green, growing privacy hedge. and you’ll look super smart.
Yup, the same construction that creates a retaining wall is also perfect for raised beds that look great curving around the edge of your patio.
Bonus points if the soil in your ground isn’t great for hosting plants. Fill the retaining wall planters with nutritious potting soil.
What about regular old planters to hold plants for a privacy screen? Not the best backyard privacy idea.
Most of our plants here in Sarasota have deep roots, so pots aren’t a good option to hold plants of any decent size.
6. Get Artsy with Custom Aluminum Panels for Backyard Privacy Ideas
One creative Tropical Gardens customer sketched her own designs to be intricately cut from aluminum panels to offer patio privacy and a stunning landscape element at the same time.
We asked an aluminum panel company to cut the designs, then we slid them into slots cut into wooden posts. Several of these artistic 4x8 panels created an effective privacy screen and outdoor artwork.
7. Need Patio Privacy Ideas? Try Lighting
Once the sun goes down, landscape lighting adds to your evening privacy.
When you have lighting on trees, glowing tiki torches or on strings twinkling overhead, it makes your neighbors less noticeable.
8. Bubbling Water Adds Privacy from Noise
A pretty water feature might not block the view of your neighbor in his bathrobe, but it will help soften the noise pollution when he practices his opera singing.
The gently bubbling sound of moving water is a sure-fire stress reducer, and it masks unpleasant neighborhood sounds, too, which adds to your sense of privacy.
Choose a cascading fountain, a tumbling waterfall, or an innovative pondless waterfall, where the water recirculates into a basin of water that stays tucked underground.
Ready for Great Patio Privacy Ideas? Talk to Us
Bring on the loud kids, the nosy neighbors and that guy who lives behind you who apparently lost the belt to his robe.
Hire Sarasota FL landscaping services with all kinds of backyard privacy ideas you’ll love.
Give us a call or fill out our form today! Think your privacy needs pose a big challenge? We accept! Our team of Sarasota designers can’t wait to create a wow-worthy outdoor space that gives you the privacy you crave.
