Who can resist the allure of a white picket fence? In this visually stunning guide, George Nash celebrates the art of the wooden fence in its full range of styles, with practical information on designing, building, and maintaining a fence. Color photographs by veteran National Geographic photographer James P. Blair make this book as beautiful as it is informative.

An experienced carpenter and talented writer, Nash traces the evolution of the American wooden fence from Colonial times to the present. He discusses the various types of fences, and explains how to design a fence to meet every conceivable need -- including how to be a good neighbor.

From laying out the fence to digging postholes, anchoring the posts, and installing gates and fence boards, Nash provides a variety of practical and useful information. There's even a troubleshooting guide for maintenance and repair.

Introduction

The Evolution of the American Fence

Wooden Fence Types

Design Factors

Fence Materials

Planning & Layout

Building a Fence

Gates

Maintenance & Repair

Index

When my wife and I bought our quaintly down-at-the-heels mid-19th century Cape some years back, it was screened from the driveway by a graceless and gateless fence of weathered gray 6-ft.-tall "pickets." The pickets were made from recycled window muntin molding stock nailed to 2x4s spiked to round cedar posts driven into the ground. Although we both liked the idea of a fence that would draw a sharp line between our tended and gardened front lawn and its uncertain dissolution into the gravelly weeds of the driveway margin, we knew it wasn't going to be that fence.

Even if the fence had been well built and standing straight and true, it still would have been all wrong. Seen from the house, 85 ft. back and 6 ft. or 8 ft. lower than the driveway's end, the closely spaced pickets blurred like the spokes of a spinning wheel into a solid screen. A privacy fence was the last thing we needed at the end of a 1,100-ft.-long driveway ending in front of a small house in the back forty of 23 acres of open fields and woods. From our low vantage, it was a great wall across the morning sky. And what message did its style and condition give to the visitor? Or indicate about the people who lived behind it? Better to live with no fence at all. So I tore it down, with the idea of building a better fence, "someday."

Two years later, when my editor suggested that the book about wooden fences that I was writing needed some photos of a real-live fence being built, and helpfully offered to reimburse the cost of materials, it was an offer I couldn't refuse.

But what kind of fence to build? We knew that we wanted a fence that would be historically and architecturally appropriate and also feel welcoming. This would clearly be a picket fence. Waist-high pickets invite easy conversation across the fence while maintaining the polite reserve that to me is the essence of New England neighborliness, so I opted for a friendly 3-ft. height. Yes, but what kind of pickets? Delightful and appealing as they may be, the baroque "eye candy" of high-style Victorian picket fences would have been embarrassingly out of place in front of our homespun hodgepodge. But a low picket fence can also appear squat and misproportioned if its pickets are too wide for their height. Narrowing the pickets would counterbalance the lack of height and save the fence from gracelessness.

These are just the kinds of decisions you'll be faced with when designing and building your own fence. This book will help you decide what kind of fence is suitable for your property and guide you through the process of design, material selection, layout, and construction. It will also give you some fascinating background information about the evolution of fences through the ages.

Although I had a great time building my particular fence, I certainly don't mean to imply that it's anything more than a fairly ordinary and pretty well-built fence. If you can swing a hammer, use a saw, and read a tape measure and level, you can probably build a perfectly adequate and maybe even handsome-looking wooden fence. As structures per se, most fences are simple affairs. But there's a lot more to a fence than its parts and the way they get put together.

I am reminded of the high stockade fence that has divided my parents' backyard from their neighbors' for more than four decades. Like some Great Wall of Suburbia, those tight, pointed cedar palings marked the northern border between the world of my childhood and enemy territory. In thinking about that fence, I was struck by the realization that to this day, I don't know the name of the people who lived behind us, how many of them there were, or what they looked like. Talk about your privacy fence! It's almost as if that fence generated a psychological force field even stronger than any merely physical barrier. Which, was, according to Mom, exactly what my folks had in mind when they built the thing. It seems that, in response to our neighbors' complaints about my and my little brother's frequent (and, in their view, provocative) incursions across the line in pursuit of escaped balls, my parents built the mother of all spite fences.

Perhaps more than any other single element of a home's facade or grounds, a fence is as symbolic as it is functional; it not only organizes and shapes the physical space of the domestic landscape, but it also mediates between the public and private realms. It's the line we draw to separate "mine" from "not mine," and "this" from "that." A fence has always (and still does) announced a homeowner's social position and regard for fellow citizens. Whether the message is "keep out" or "do come in," whether it's "move along" or "tarry a while," a fence, by its very nature, cannot help but be significant. Such potent visual impact suggests that any fence ought to be carefully designed. The moral is and always will be: Little things count.